Social Workers' Attitudes Toward Parents of Children in Child Protective Services: Evaluation of a Family-Focused Casework Training Program

ABSTRACT

Recent concerns regarding permanence for foster children have inspired child welfare agencies to re-focus more of their efforts on biological parents as permanent resources for children in care. The social work field has responded to this situation with family-focused training for frontline staff; one such curriculum is the Family Development Credential (FDC). Tools exist for evaluating FDC trainees' retention of material and ability to integrate FDC concepts into practice. However, the transformative nature of the program (i.e., the way in which FDC training is associated with participants' family-focused attitudes towards clients) has not previously been measured. FDC-trained and non-FDC-trained child protection workers (N = 251) in one state completed a vignette study that tapped their attitudes toward the parents of children involved in child protective services. No difference in family-focused attitudes emerged between the two groups. Implications for practice and suggestions for further research are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitudes
• family-focused
• foster care
• parents
• permanence
• reunification
• training