Supporting the child welfare workforce: The National Child Welfare Workforce Institute

Child welfare systems serve the nation’s most vulnerable children, youth, and families. For a child welfare agency to accomplish its mission, it must attract, prepare, and retain a diverse, skilled, and committed workforce. Absent attention to strategic workforce capacity building in jurisdictions and Tribal child welfare systems, safety, permanency, and well-being for children may be impeded, and the well-being of workers may also be impaired. Achieving the highest level of outcome effectiveness requires a comprehensive approach to leadership and workforce development.

Since 2009, the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute has worked in partnership with jurisdictions and Tribes to improve organizational capacity and workforce effectiveness; foster adaptive leadership at all levels; build an agency climate that supports the implementation of evidence-informed practices to ensure the well-being of staff and families; and engage academic partners to educate child welfare professionals.

Retention of skilled child welfare staff is a pressing workforce issue. The literature reveals factors that undermine agencies’ ability to retain high performing child welfare staff, including high workloads; lack of worker support and recognition of successes; a top-down agency structure that does not foster distributive leadership; and a compliance-driven culture that disempowers the workforce (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2010). These organizational factors lead to work-related burnout, impede the ability of staff to do their jobs, and predict staff exits (Leake, Rienks, & Obermann, 2017).

The Journal of Public Child Welfare devotes this Special Issue to the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) and the research results and lessons learned about implementation of workforce strategies to improve child welfare workforce outcomes for public and Tribal agencies.

This Special Issue is introduced by Rebecca Huffman, Child Welfare Workforce Specialist in the Children’s Bureau. Huffman’s paper, Thinking Out of the Box, calls out the need to think more broadly and unconventionally about ways to support a diverse, skilled, and committed child welfare workforce in order to provide exceptional child welfare services to children, youth, and families. The child welfare agency workforce is our most valuable asset. But Huffman asserts that a new vision is needed for child welfare workforce development. She traces the history of the Children’s Bureau’s workforce development efforts to the current trends of innovative approaches to the workforce through research, leadership, education, and information dissemination. Challenges abound, yet Huffman offers important ideas for improving the recruitment and retention of diverse and skilled child welfare workers and identifying the organizational culture and climate issues that affect their intent to remain at their jobs.

Robin Leake and her coauthors Anna de Guzman, Katie Golief, and Shauna Rienks review how NCWWI developed a comprehensive model to improve the health of the workforce in public, private, and Tribal child welfare agencies. Entitled Workforce Development Strategies: A Model for Preparing the Workforce to Support Transformational Systems in Child Welfare, the paper describes an extensive approach to workforce development in one state agency and highlights evaluation outcomes of eight key activities. The findings suggest that NCWWI’s holistic approach to workforce development was feasible and led to positive change at the individual and organizational levels in one large state agency.

The second 5 years of funding for NCWWI (2014–2018) began a serious focus on achieving racial equity through a partnership with the Centre for the Study of Social Policy. Webinars focused on ways that child welfare agencies address dismantling racial inequity. In their article, Racial Diversity and Inclusive Representation in Urban Public Child Welfare, Catherine Lawrence, Wendy Zietlin, Sreyashi Chakravarty, Angela DeCristofano, and Salvador Armendariz use NCWWI data from a multi-state survey of child welfare staff to examine the degree to which workers of color are equitably represented in supervisory and managerial roles at their agencies. The article also explores the degree to which white workers and workers of color differ on their intentions to remain employed. The results provide an understanding of racial differences in workforce outcomes known to impact wellbeing and retention, two factors that directly influence an organization’s capacity to serve children, youth, and families.

Retention of child welfare workers is a serious concern in child welfare agencies across the country. Two articles in this Special Edition address outcomes of NCWWI’s workforce retention efforts. The first article is Retention of Child Welfare Workers: Staying Strategies and Support, written by Anna de Guzman, Tabitha Carver-Roberts, Robin Leake, and Shauna Rienks. This two-study paper used NCWWI’s organizational health assessment data to validate a self-reported intent to stay measure as predictive of a 3-year retention of public child welfare workers (Study 1). Study 2 explored which organizational supports were associated with intent to stay. The authors assert that single intervention solutions are insufficient and discussed multi-pronged workplace strategies to help prevent negative experiences leading to turnover.

The second article on retention focuses on the role of peer support in retention among child welfare workers. Entitled Expanding Our Understanding of the Role of Peer Support in Child Welfare Workforce Retention, authors Jennifer Sedivy, Shauna Rienks, Robin Leake, and Amy He have attempted to build more conclusive evidence regarding the specific role of peer support in child welfare workers’ decision to remain with or leave an agency. These NCWWI evaluators conducted a Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) of the child welfare systems in a large western county and two states in the Midwest. Examining the relationship between unit-level peer support, individual-level factors, and organizational climate, researchers found convincing evidence of the vital role of peer support in retention.

Leaders in child welfare operate in a constantly changing environment that requires the acquisition of adaptive skills, yet leaders rarely have the opportunity for meaningful performance feedback. Amy Grenier and Shauna Lea Rienks’ article, The Views of Many: 360 Feedback for Child Welfare Leadership Development, discusses the results of NCWWI’s leadership approach using the 360 Feedback. Managers in eight states attended the NCWWI Leadership for Middle Managers (LAMM) training and coaching. The 360 assessment is a feedback mechanism that enables leaders to reflect on others’ perceptions of their strengths and challenges that might not otherwise be provided due to their position of authority. The study explored managers’ self-report, coworkers’ reports of managers’ strengths and challenges, the alignment of self and other-reports, and the perception of managers’ changed behaviors over time. Baseline assessment occurred prior to managers attending LAMM training and receiving coaching. Managers reported more regular engagement in leadership behaviors related to leading change at 1-year post-LAMM training, coaching and receiving 360 feedback.

NCWWI has administered federally funded student stipend programs for over a decade. From 2008–2013 NCWWI worked with twelve social work programs and 349 stipend students. The following 5 years, 13 social work programs engaged 319 stipend students in a program relabled University Partnerships. In their article, The Stipend Student Commitment to Child Welfare, Gary Anderson, Cheryl Williams-Hecksel, and Anna de Guzman reflect on this decade of stipend scholarships and supports for students to attend school and gain a child welfare relevant social work education. Evaluators used a mixed methods longitudinal multi-site design for traineeship participants while in their programs and through employment post-graduation. Based on student reports, the social work programs offered child welfare relevant courses and field education that resulted in students stating that they were more competent and confident about their abilities to do child welfare work. The instructional and field placement experiences supported student readiness to work in child welfare, which increased their intention to stay in child welfare.

The final article in the Special Issue is Developing Adaptive Change Leaders in Child Welfare, written by Robin Leake, Katharine Cahn, Amy Gremier, Deborah Reed, and Shauna Rienks. Skilled leadership of child welfare agencies is critical to the success of child welfare outcomes. This article describes the Leadership Academy for Middle Managers (LAMM), an empirically tested intervention based on adaptive change leadership principles and skills, and summarizes the evaluation approach and findings. From October 2014 to June 2018, survey data were collected from eight training cohorts in eight different states, which included between 10 and 35 participants per cohort. A longitudinal design examined the programs’ effectiveness in enhancing child welfare middle managers’ leadership competencies and their ability to implement organizational change. The evaluation also measured individual and workplace factors that affect learning transfer. In addition to positive results for training content, learning transfer occurred through such strategies as 360 assessments to help managers understand their leadership strengths and gaps; development of Change Initiatives to help managers apply their learning to their job; and coaching to support implementation of change.

Together, these articles highlight NCWWI’s work over two decades to build organizational capacity and workforce effectiveness with partnerships that enhance the ability of agencies to foster leadership at all levels, build an agency climate that supports the well-being of staff and families, and engage academic partners to educate child welfare professionals.