This book examines a key issue in the field of human and social services: how to retain workers in child protection and welfare organisations. Research over the last decade has highlighted the turnover of these workers as being a pressing and perennial issue that impacts upon service users, staff welfare, resources and the reputation of this sector. This book presents the findings of a study examining social workers' retention in child protection and welfare. The findings from this study highlights how workers' retention is influenced by exchanges relationships with colleagues and managers, and this book presents a unique 'career preference' typology which expands our understanding of how workers make decisions to stay or leave based upon their pre-conceptions of career pathways post-qualification. The book also examines findings associated with the employment mobility of these workers within child protection and tracks their next post after leaving, which provides some surprising findings regarding how we understand and measure turnover for these workers. The book also examines rich qualitative data from these workers' experiences of being a social worker in child protection associated with; job satisfaction, commitment to child protection and welfare work, making a difference, quality of supervision, autonomy, and exchange relationships with peers, all of which emerged as important factors in social workers' decisions to stay or leave. The implications of this study's findings for theory are also explored. Kenneth Burns is deputy course director of the Master of Social Work and a research associate with the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century at University College Cork, Ireland.

BSW/MSW education funded by Title IV-E of Social Security Act ("Title IV-E Child Welfare Education") is an important incentive to encourage social workers to stay in the child protection field. It aims to demonstrate the training partnership between universities and public child welfare agencies. This book contains essential research results with a focus on the impact of Title IV-E Child Welfare Education to improve worker capacities and case outcomes, as well as on the process and results of social work education in promoting public child welfare work. There are nine chapters written by renowned researchers in public child welfare who applied rigorous quantitative and/or qualitative methodologies to clearly describe measures used, data sources, outcome variables, and implications for education, practice, policy, and research. These evidence-based articles address the following child welfare topics: training partnerships and worker outcomes, effective pedagogy and online education, workplace climate and retention factors, and other topics connecting BSW/MSW education to public child welfare practice. Future child welfare education will need to further expand child welfare knowledge and skills, strengthen worker competencies with a strong commitment to social work values and ethical practice principles, and develop a cohesive supervisory network to build a workforce with positive attitude toward child protection programs. This collection will inform child welfare educators, administrators and legislators regarding the impact of Title IV-E Child Welfare Education on the development of public child welfare and make recommendations to improve the child welfare curriculum in social work education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Public Child Welfare.

Since the 1980s, child welfare agencies and social work programs in more than 40 states have come together to address recruitment and retention issues by preparing social work students for child welfare practice—and to enhance the delivery of child welfare services. This book documents the outcomes of these partnerships to help you assess their value and sustainability! Evaluation Research in Child Welfare: Improving Outcomes Through University-Public Agency Partnerships is a critical examination of the diverse outcomes—and strategies for assessing them—of university/public child welfare agency partnerships designed to prepare social work students for public child welfare practice. This informative book addresses outcomes of these specialized training efforts which were supported by federal Title IV-E and Title IV-B Section 426 funds. Special attention is paid to programs addressing diversity and cultural competence through staff development. The book follows the process of tracking the career paths of students in several states (large and small, rural and urban), as well as cross-state collaborations that include university, agency, consumer, and student partnerships. From the Editors: “Rising drug problems such as crack and cocaine addiction, along with co-occurring challenges such as poverty, domestic violence, and mental health issues, have helped to reinforce the need to have the most effective services delivered by the most well-prepared staff. Moreover, such challenges compel the most relevant, scientifically based approaches, requiring a closer connection of public child welfare systems to social work education programs and related academic disciplines. The articles featured in this book serve as progress markers for this re-professionalization initiative. They constitute snapshots of some of the current progress in workforce development, including social work based education, training, and capacity building in public child welfare. They also reflect social work/public child welfare partnerships and the lessons that are being learned when the research, educational, and service resources of schools of social work are harnessed to build a better trained work force that can provide improved services.” In this informative book, you'll find a national overview of historical efforts to promote professional social work practice in child welfare, as well as examinations of: special challenges presented by privatized systems curricula and agencies training opportunities that grow from research partnerships the importance and impact of racial and ethnic diversity for future social workers the cultural competency needs of BSW and MSW students the differing cultural perspectives of universities and agencies—which must be bridged to create successful partnerships the benefits of these partnerships in terms of outcomes for students, clients, agencies, and social work education programs

This book is a valuable, comprehensive and unique reference text on Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC), a new work stress theory. It proposes a new PSC theory concerning the corporate climate for workers’ psychological health, its origins and implications for work stress, and provides a critique of current research and theories. It provides a comprehensive review of all PSC studies to date. The chapters discuss state-of-the-art empirical evidence testing PSC theory in relation to management roles, organisational resilience, corruption, organisational status, cultural perspectives, illegitimate tasks, high PSC work groups, PSC variability in work groups, etc. They investigate outcomes such as psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, depression, worry, engagement, health, cognitive decline, personal initiative, boredom, cynicism, sickness absence, and productivity loss, in various workplace settings across many countries. This unique book allows practitioners to rapidly update practical measures, benchmarks and processes, and provides students and trainees with an introduction to PSC and important concepts and methods, quantitative and qualitative, in occupational health with leads to further sources. Students as well as experts on occupational health and safety, human resource management, occupational health psychology, organisational psychology and practitioners, unions and policy makers will find this book highly informative. It covers relevant materials for undergraduate and postgraduate education, drawing upon the concepts, topics and methods (diary, multilevel, longitudinal, qualitative, data linkage) within the multidisciplinary occupational health area.

Following high-profile Serious Case Reviews into the tragic deaths of children, including Victoria Climbie, Peter Connelly and Daniel Pelka, information sharing has now become a moral and political imperative for safeguarding the welfare of children. What prompts information sharing and how do we get it right? This accessible book challenges widely held assumptions about information sharing in child welfare that facts about risks to children are clear and that sharing them with other professionals is a straightforward process. End-of-chapter questions prompt reflection and ensure direct practice relevance. This is essential reading for academics and policy makers, students on post-qualifying child protection courses, social workers, managers and all other professionals tasked with safeguarding children.

Developing an Empirically Based Practice Initiative documents practice techniques that were used during a three-year training/demonstration project for child welfare supervisors working in the frontlines of child protection services in the Southeastern United States. This unique book is a guide to combining research methodology with staff training to enhance the quality of evidence-based practice in the field. The book examines techniques that were used in training modules in four states, highlighting practice models and intervention outcomes from an evidence-based perspective. Developing an Empirically Based Practice Initiative includes details about the project from the federal perspective (The Children’s Bureau) and the operational implications at the Southern Regional Quality Improvement Center (SRQIC) level. The book examines the issues of providing technical research assistance to child welfare agencies and the complexities of cross-site evaluation with different political jurisdictions. Developing an Empirically Based Practice Initiative examines: The Children’s Bureau discretionary grant program the relationship between child welfare workers’ career plans and their abilities to accomplish core work tasks secondary traumatic stress (STS) in child protective services workers methods for monitoring and evaluating child welfare supervisors clinical decision-making as a tool for building effective supervision skills the use of outcome data for decision-making the development and implementation of the Tennessee project the use of “360-degree” evaluations to improve clinical skill development the Intervention Design and Development model Developing an Empirically Based Practice Initiative is an invaluable aid for social work practitioners, child welfare workers, case managers, and supervisors, and for social work academics and students.

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which became law in 1997, elicited a major shift in federal policy and thinking toward child welfare, emphasizing children’s safety, permanency, and well-being over preserving their biological ties at all costs. The first edition of this volume was the earliest major social work textbook to map the field of child welfare after ASFA’s passage, detailing the practices, policies, programs, and research affected by the legislation’s new attitude toward care. This second edition highlights the continuously changing child welfare climate in the U.S., including content on the Fostering Connections Act of 2008. Gerald P. Mallon and Peg McCartt Hess have updated the text throughout, drawing from real world case examples, using data obtained from the national Child and Family Services Reviews and emerging empirically based practices. They have also added chapters addressing child welfare workforce issues, supervision, and research and evaluation. Divided into four sections—child and adolescent well-being, child and adolescent safety, permanency for children and adolescents, and systemic issues within services, policies, and programs—this newly edited volume provides a current understanding of family support and child protective services, risk assessment, substance and sexual abuse issues, domestic violence issues, guardianship, reunification, kinship and foster family care, adoption, and transitional living programs. Recognized scholars, practitioners, and policy makers also discuss meaningful engagement with families, particularly Latino families; health care for children and youth, including mental health care; effective practices with LGBT youth and their families; placement stability; foster parent recruitment and retention; and the challenges of working with immigrant children, youth, and families.

Each year, child protective services receive reports of child abuse and neglect involving six million children, and many more go unreported. The long-term human and fiscal consequences of child abuse and neglect are not relegated to the victims themselves-they also impact their families, future relationships, and society. In 1993, the National Research Council (NRC) issued the report, Under-standing Child Abuse and Neglect, which provided an overview of the research on child abuse and neglect. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research updates the 1993 report and provides new recommendations to respond to this public health challenge. According to this report, while there has been great progress in child abuse and neglect research, a coordinated, national research infrastructure with high-level federal support needs to be established and implemented immediately. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research recommends an actionable framework to guide and support future child abuse and neglect research. This report calls for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to child abuse and neglect research that examines factors related to both children and adults across physical, mental, and behavioral health domains-including those in child welfare, economic support, criminal justice, education, and health care systems-and assesses the needs of a variety of subpopulations. It should also clarify the causal pathways related to child abuse and neglect and, more importantly, assess efforts to interrupt these pathways. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research identifies four areas to look to in developing a coordinated research enterprise: a national strategic plan, a national surveillance system, a new generation of researchers, and changes in the federal and state programmatic and policy response.