Building and marketing an image in child welfare

Child welfare, 2013

This article examines the factors that can affect job satisfaction, organizational culture and climate, and intent to leave at a public child welfare agency. Findings from focus group data collected from direct line, middle, and senior managers revealed a passive defensive culture. The authors discuss concrete organizational interventions to assist the agency in shifting to a constructive oriented culture through enhancements in communication, including supervision and shared decisionmaking, recognition and rewards, and improvement in other areas related to working conditions.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2012

Studies have revealed that some, but not all, jail custody officers fear workplace victimization. The job demands-resources theoretical model holds that job demands result in strain, increasing the chances of negative outcomes, such as job burnout, decreased job satisfaction, and fear of being harmed on the job. This framework also contends that job resources help reduce psychological strain, and, in turn, reduce negative outcomes, including fear of victimization at work. Survey results from 587 custody officers from a large county correctional system in Florida were analyzed in order to determine how various workplace demand and resource variables were related to perceived danger at work. Our multivariate analytical models revealed that the resource variables of instrumental communication, perceptions that infectious disease among inmates being properly handled, perceptions that inmates were properly controlled, perceptions that security was proper, and supervisor support were related to decreased perceptions of danger, while formalization (a resource variable) and role strain (a demand variable) were related to increased perceptions of danger. Overall, there was partial support for the job demands-resources model, with some variables having significant effects and others not. Custody officers are responsible for overseeing and controlling inmates to help correctional facilities meet their goals of providing a secure, safe, and humane environment. Not only are officers an important resource, but they are an expensive one (Leip and Stinchcomb 2013). In light of the importance that they play, researchers have explored how workplace variables affect officers. Working with inmates is a unique, and possibly straining, and stressful experience (Griffin 2001a; Higgins, Tewksbury, and Denney 2012). A feeling of being at risk while at work has been found to have a positive effect on correctional staff job stress (

2019

Child welfare supervisors have a unique vantage point, leading local service delivery efforts while representing a larger organizational bureaucracy. They also play a key role in workforce stability, as high caseworker turnover remains a real problem that affects clients, communities, and agency budgets. Using a qualitative thematic content analysis to analyze data collected from a sample of public child welfare supervisors in a southern state (n=117), findings from this study provide suggestions for systematically addressing workforce turnover through the unique perspective of the child welfare supervisor. Supervisors made recommendations to improve agency infrastructure, organizational climate, and organizational culture as areas for immediate consideration to address this significant problem.

Journal of Public Child Welfare, 2015

Child welfare professionals work on the front lines with maltreated children and their families every day. The very nature of the work can have a significant impact on their emotional well being and ability to effectively perform their jobs, potentially limiting quality service delivery and contributing to overall workforce capacity issues such a turnover. This study examined the relationship between vicarious traumatization and turnover among 1,192 child welfare professionals in five different child welfare organizations across four states. Propositions from constructivist self-development theory (CSDT) were utilized to examine the causal relationship between vicarious traumatization and child welfare professionals' intent to leave their organization. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to assess the degree of fit between the observed data and a hypothesized theoretical model examining the relationship between vicarious trauma and intent to leave. Findings from SEM analyses revealed a significant relationship between vicarious traumatization and intent to leave. This finding indicates that child welfare professionals who experienced higher rates of vicarious traumatization are more likely to leave their organization. Implications of these findings for theory, practice, and research are delineated.

Children today, 1981

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Child welfare, 2008

This comparison study analyzes the commonalties, similarities, and differences on supervisory and organizational factors between a group of high turnover systems and a group of low turnover systems. Significant differences on organizational factors, but not on supervisory factors, emerged from the statistical analysis. Additionally, this study found that low turnover is not necessarily predictive of a healthy organizational environment. Implications for turnover reduction and prevention are provided in conclusion.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2008

With the growing recognition that a competent, committed workforce is critical to the effective delivery of public child welfare services, this study implemented a systematic review process to identify the personal and organizational factors that may enhance retention and limit turnover among child welfare workers. Starting with an extensive search of the literature across several decades and outreach to locate studies, the authors systematically analyzed research that used retention or turnover as the dependent variable. Of the 154 documents identified, 25 were research studies that focused on these variables. This paper focuses on reviewing the methods and findings of nine studies that used multivariate analyses to explore the relationships between organizational and/or personal factors as independent variables and retention or turnover as dependent variables. Although rigorous and systematic, this review was hampered by differing definitions, samples, measures, and analyses among these studies. However, the findings of this review reinforce the importance of workers' commitment to child welfare, self-efficacy, and low levels of emotional exhaustion as important personal factors for staying, and supervisory and co-worker support and salary and benefits as important organizational factors affecting retention. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2014

This study views the extent to which staff buy-in for an organizational innovation in child welfare (CW) relates to implementation progress. The study occurs during implementation of a statewide practice model that was supported with technical assistance from the Mountains and Plains Child Welfare Implementation Center (MPCWIC) and framed around the National Implementation Research Network model. Mixed methods were used to address three study questions: what is the level and nature of buy-in related to the innovation? (2) does buy-in vary according to staff characteristics, and what is the relationship between buy-in, local level agency readiness, and implementation status one year after project start? Survey data were collected from 568 CW staff in 13 local county agencies and 12 implementation specialists assigned as coaches. Focus groups and interviews were conducted with 52 staff in four agencies. Bivariate chi-square analyses and multivariate regression using a cumulative logit model showed that buy-in was related to gender and agency tenure. Implementation progress was higher among smaller agencies, and agencies with lower levels of job stress. Qualitative themes centered on staff inclusivity in project design, communication, and supervisor support. Findings highlight the need to adapt implementation strategies in urban and rural locales, and to attend strongly to staff selection, supervision, and inclusion during implementation. Addressing job stress may help bolster implementation.

Children’s social workers are more likely to burn out than their adult services counterparts, as a result of feeling disengaged from and drained by their work, an academic study has found. The analysis, based on two large datasets compiled between 2010 and 2013, found “higher levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, and lower levels of personal accomplishment” among children’s social workers.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2014

Child welfare has been overseen, litigated, reviewed, and chastised by those internal to the system and those who have never faced a traumatized child or an abusive parent. The work of child welfare occurs within organizations, generally large, public sector agencies. Literature has paid little attention to the organizational structure or staffing patterns of the agencies mandated to serve vulnerable children and families. This article explores the challenges facing child welfare and ponders the notion that the structure of public child welfare agencies has developed in response to internal and external factors. The resulting organizational structure may not be the best to support the myriad of mandates that child welfare must achieve.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2009

The findings of this study build on and extend previous research on factors that contribute to job satisfaction in public child welfare agencies. Because the study agency has stabilized its workforce, it provides a unique opportunity to examine other organizational and environmental factors that may make a more subtle, yet just as deleterious contribution to staff dissatisfaction. Based on survey responses from 927 respondents, five research questions were addressed: 1) How does job satisfaction compare to staff in other human service organizations nationally? 2. Are differences in staff characteristics related to job satisfaction? 3. Are there particular areas of job difficulty that predict job satisfaction? 4. Are there differences by job category in job satisfaction? 5. What staff or job-related factors predict job satisfaction overall? Study findings were consistent with others that have examined organizational dynamics, particularly role stressors, supervision, and performance recognition and rewards. Results indicate that length of employment, being a supervisor, and experiencing difficulties with working conditions, supervision, and the lack of external client resources predict the highest levels of job dissatisfaction. Implications for public child welfare organizations are discussed, including strategies for attending to those organizational factors that negatively affect employees' perceptions of organizational support.

Journal of Public Child Welfare, 2013

The purpose of this research was to learn from public child welfare case managers what they wanted from direct supervisors during times of organizational change. Case managers were interviewed about how supervisors supported or hindered their use of a new model of practice. Data were analyzed using a content analysis approach. Findings indicated that case managers want supervisors to communicate with them about how to perform their jobs under the new model and support to help alleviate the stress they experience from the uncertainty of organizational change.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2007

A statewide qualitative study of personal and organizational factors contributing to employees' decisions to either remain or leave employment in child welfare is described. Of particular interest was identifying factors related to employee retention. Professional staff (n = 369) in a state public child welfare agency, representing all levels of the agency and regions of the state, participated in 58 focus group interviews comprising some 1200 person hours of data collection. Core findings of the results are presented and discussed in view of information from other recent child welfare workforce studies. Recommendations and implications of the results for policy and practice are described.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2014