Desirable Qualifications for Child Welfare Work as Recommended by Public and Private Child Welfare Agencies

Increasingly, public sector child welfare agencies are contracting with private agencies for the provision of specialized services to clients while maintaining oversight and case management responsibilities. At the same time, funders, both private and public, are demanding that service providers partner and collaborate with one another. In this article, we present results from a study of a unique partnership between two state child welfare agencies and a private child welfare agency aimed at reunifying families whose children have been removed and placed in foster care. Data was obtained from 41 key informants using a questionnaire and a structured interview. Findings support earlier studies of collaboration, and indicate the strengths of this partnership and factors that facilitated and hindered it. The results have implications for agencies that both contract for and provide a range of child welfare services as well as other interagency relationships.

ABSTRACTCalls for transformational systems change that lead to improved outcomes for children in child welfare can only be answered by preparing an effective workforce and building an agency climate that is ready for change. The National Child Welfare Workforce Institute developed a comprehensive model for public, private, and tribal child welfare agencies to improve the health of their workforce. This paper describes the application of the model in one state agency. Through leadership development, a distributive teaming approach, and implementation of an evidence-supported practice model, they were able to significantly improve the organizational climate of their agency. The article discusses practice implications and recommendations for child welfare agencies and technical assistance providers for fostering positive organizational health and ultimately improving outcomes for families.

New directions for research on the organizational and institutional context of child welfare agencies: Introduction to the symposium on “The Organizational and Managerial Context of Private Child Welfare Agencies”

Child fatalities initiate a formidable exchange between the media and child welfare services. The impact affects the families involved, staff and administrators of public and private child welfare agencies, and the community. The media role to provide the public with information in a prompt manner can be at odds with the child welfare administrator's desire to improve practice for all children. In many jurisdictions, the relationship between the media and the child welfare organization is weak, if not adversarial. This commentary poses questions for debate and suggests that the media and child welfare need to have an ongoing relationship where both are focused on informing the public as a continuous process.

Differential factors influencing public and voluntary child welfare workers' intention to leave

In criticizing my proposals to restructure public child welfare system (Pelton, 1991), Barth (1993) likened care and discipline of children by parents to helping and policing of families and parents by state. He did so while disputing a claim I never made--that it is not possible to be an authority and helper at once. What I do argue is that results of combining helping and policing roles within context of public child welfare agency have been unsatisfactory, and we should examine how each role might be hindering successful execution of other. During past three decades, increasingly wider spheres of child welfare problems, many of which are related to poverty, have been characterized as child abuse and neglect. These terms are accusatory and, when used as a lens through which to view multiply caused problems, promote an overfixation on parental fault and blindness to varied help that is needed. This orientation led to reporting laws and public awareness campaigns that encourage reports based on vague definitions of child abuse and neglect, thereby swamping child welfare agencies with complaints and rapidly reducing role of child welfare workers to investigators of wrongdoing by mostly impoverished parents. Budgets were spent on investigation and increasingly on foster care, with little money left over for relevant preventive services. These continuing trends are reflected in increase in national foster care population to an estimated 447,000 children by end of fiscal year 1992 (Tatara, 1992), a figure rapidly approaching a record for this century. More depressingly, no evidence exists that children are better protected. However, remedy for child welfare system is not only to narrow laws, although that is necessary. Although I have just spoken of unfortunate developments of past few decades, nostalgia for more distant past is not warranted. From beginning of this century children have frequently been placed into foster care, and agencies have always spent far greater proportions of their budgets on placement than on prevention. It is not for naught that impoverished immigrant parents, fearing public agencies' predecessors (the societies for prevention of cruelty to children), yet having nowhere else to turn for help, viewed such agencies as the Cruelty and as child-snatchers. Such agencies, both public and private, have always had a dual role, and investigative, policing, coercive, and child-removing role has always greatly diminished helping role. This failed paternalistic strategy toward impoverished families experiencing child welfare difficulties should be ended. My proposals call for transformation of current public child welfare agencies into family preservation agencies by divesting them of their investigative, child removal, and foster care roles. I proposed that police functions, such as investigation of possible law violation, be shifted to police. Child welfare workers would no longer serve as society's police. In addition, I proposed that foster care system be made independent of new family preservation agency. This system, whose function is to protect children who cannot be protected in their own homes, should be placed under family court system and be operated by social workers specially trained as foster care workers who would also advise court on all decisions concerning entry into and exit from foster care. All family preservation, preventive, and supportive services would be offered and delivered by new family preservation agency, whether it be to biological, foster, or adoptive families or to children living with relatives. Let us build a new system based on a more positive philosophy. In fact, social work has philosophy, but structure of current child welfare system is incompatible with it. Much of professional child welfare community favors empowering families, focusing on strengths rather than deficits, and providing supports. …

The unintended consequence of the Indian Child Welfare Act: American Indian trust in public child welfare

Although public child welfare has historically been a major employer of professional social workers, within the last twenty years MSW graduates have shunned public social services for the private sector. Using Title IV-E funds, universities have responded to this shortage by providing financial and educational incentives for graduate social work students to work with the diverse and complex cases in public child welfare. As a result, the numbers of graduate social workers seeking employment in public child welfare have increased, but questions remain about the extent to which professional social workers remain employed in public child welfare agencies beyond their employment payback period. This paper reports the results of one research study on the factors that affect the retention of these master's level child welfare workers.

Agency-based design teams effectively address workforce issues in public child welfare agencies. This article presents findings from an adaptation of a design team intervention for private child welfare agencies. A longitudinal mixed-methodology design measures effects of the intervention and conditions of implementation. Pre–post surveys of workers (n = 137) and a comparison group (n = 153) measure climate, job satisfaction, perceptions of child welfare, and intent to leave. Statistically significant increases of 0.37 points on dimensions of organizational justice and support (justice: p = 0.01; support: p = 0.03) parallel the team’s perceived effect of their work—that it will make the organization more fair and accountable.

Qualitative analysis of private mediation: Benefits for families in public child welfare agencies

Frontline and managerial child welfare practice occurs within the context of a "partnership" among public agencies that have statutory mandate for child protection and related services and private agencies that provide an array of services to children and families through contractual or informal means. Empirical literature has begun to develop around key questions within this interorganizational system, including how public and private child welfare agency relationships and contracting procedures should be structured to promote effective service delivery; how performance measurement and management systems can be developed to promote child safety, permanency, and well-being; and how managers can help promote the delivery of effective and culturally appropriate services. Yet the impact of these organizational and institutional child welfare trends on practitioners has not been clarified. This article synthesizes the literature on these questions to draw implications for practice for the frontline staff, both public and private, driving service delivery.

Private child welfare agency managers' perceptions of the effectiveness of different performance management strategies

Measuring organizational health in child welfare agencies

Use of data to assess performance and promote outcome achievement by public and private child welfare agency staff

Citizens are increasingly being called upon to participate in public child welfare programs. This participation—through such federally mandated programs as Foster Care Review Boards, Court Appointed Special Advocates, and Citizen Review Panels—can potentially promote authentic community involvement or leave angry agencies and panel members in its wake. These disparate outcomes are dependent upon numerous factors both within the child welfare agency and the broader civic domain. This article reviews the current literature on citizen participation in public child welfare with special emphasis on the programs mentioned above. Additionally, strategies are offered for using citizens to support positive change within public child welfare agencies.