Investing in the Child Welfare Workforce

Investing in the Child Welfare Workforce

Since the inception of the Children’s Bureau in 1912, social work leadership has been essential to the development of services to the most vulnerable children and families in the United States. Such attention to vulnerability has ranged from protecting children from child labor to advancing maternal aid such as mother’s pensions, an historic precursor to Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and now Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This leadership has been data informed and often data driven involving social workers spearheading changes in child welfare policy, organizations, and practices.

The alignment of the social work profession with the Children’s Bureau has been long recognized (Briar-Lawson, McCarthy, & Dickinson, 2013; Ellett & Harris, 2012; Lieberman & Nelson, 2013). Even so, a deprofessionalization of the workforce serving our most vulnerable children and families occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One major reason for this unfortunate deprofessionalization was a federal policy change—income supports and social services were separated. The consequences for child welfare services have been severe, especially where the workforce is concerned. Today, there are counties in the United States in which no social worker is on staff in any role, and the county child welfare organization overall is limited in professional social work practice knowledge about how to assess and build capacity with families, including addressing domestic violence, substance abuse, mental health issues and traumas, disabilities, and poverty.

With this historical context as a backdrop, it makes sense to call for the concerted reintroduction of social work–educated professionals rather than attack the alignment of the Children’s Bureau with the social work profession, as Stoesz has done. Even more curious is Stoesz’s belief that other professions might replace the efforts underway in social work to reprofessionalize child welfare. It is possible that Stoesz is unaware of the reprofessionalization movement in child welfare, which can be viewed as a direct response to the tragedies of child deaths and children drifting in care, linked to stressful work conditions, limited training and job preparation, and high turnover.

Given the populations served by the child welfare system, what other professions are as aligned with the issues of abuse and neglect, poverty, mental health, addictions, domestic violence, disabilities, family-centered practice, and family capacity building? What evidence can be marshaled in support of the argument that any and all such professions have positioned themselves to generate, disseminate, and improve the knowledge base for child welfare practice, extending to organizational redesign, leadership development, and policy change?

Issues regarding Title IV-E training and education funds are important to understand and discuss. Significantly, these funds are not limited to social work. They can be generated by public and tribal child welfare agencies in partnership with other professions. However, the fact remains that, while some individuals in other professions may be committed to child welfare, no other profession has stepped forward to build systematic partnerships or to work to develop and deliver the training or education for the array of services provided by public child welfare. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) have played key roles in this reprofessionalization movement. There are no other national professional associations seeking to join.

Stoesz rightly raises questions about the effectiveness of services in child welfare, given troubling findings from Child and Family Service Reviews. Workforce development is one key to improvements. It has taken decades to reach the point for child welfare workforce development to be seen as a critical organizational improvement strategy. Even so, the child welfare field lacks benchmarks for optimal workforce measures and practices involving recruitment and selection of appropriate professional staff, managing worker trauma, reducing turnover, and increasing retention. Not only is child welfare one of the most complex practice domains, it is also one of the highest risk in terms of worker safety. The recent and most tragic death of a Vermont social worker in child welfare is yet another painful reminder of this reality.

Although most relevant and committed to child welfare, there is little risk that the field will be taken over by the social work profession. Even if all schools of social work were to partner with public child welfare agencies and all graduates entered child welfare exclusively, there still would not be a social work–dominated workforce. At best, public child welfare systems comprise a mixed workforce. Governed by generic civil service hiring regulations and, in some states, unions, even the prioritization of social work and those with related degrees is still not possible, except in a few instances. Working to support this mixed workforce, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences’ program, chastised by Dr. Stoesz and incorrectly identified, is designed to challenge current managers and staff to expand their knowledge and skill around leadership and management with a goal of using evidence to inform practice; testing or evaluating their practices; and improving organizational policies, practices, and workforce culture. Also, the Mandel School is a diverse faculty comprising not only social workers but psychologists, public policy analysts, criminologist, gerontologist, and counselors. Their students are exposed to an array of allied professions as part of their education and learn to manage across disciplines and professions to better serve children and families.

Currently, staff employed by the public child welfare agency in many states have degrees in history, the arts, business, and other disciplines completely unrelated to human service work. The Mandel School takes employees with these diverse backgrounds and trains them to be professional social workers in a public child welfare setting and to be part of succession planning for the next generation of administrators, supervisors, and leaders in the organization. Contrary to the assertion by Stoesz that these employees will support the status quo, their master’s training supports their development as leaders of change in the organization. The expected result is better trained child welfare workers and a more effective and responsive agency.

NCWWI’s Structure

The NCWWI was funded by the Children’s Bureau in 2008 and again in 2013 through competitive processes open to any university school or department, not just to schools of social work. Stoesz wrongly asserts that the funding was for social work only. In his critique, Stoesz reiterates his persistent complaints about which he has written in numerous articles related to what’s wrong with social work education and research, the Children’s Bureau, CSWE, Title IV-E training, and child protective services. In the middle of his diatribe, Stoesz perversely implicates NCWWI, marshaling grave inaccuracies to illustrate his points.

Stoesz claims that NCWWI is a cartel but offers no evidence for this. A cartel is typically defined as a group formed to control certain activities and outcomes. Rather, NCWWI is an alliance of universities with shared goals of improving social work education and building the capacity of the child welfare workforce through the development of skilled child welfare leaders and change agents. In its current iteration, as Stoesz (2016) correctly notes, NCWWI’s purpose is to “increase child welfare practice effectiveness through diverse partnerships that focus on workforce systems development, organizational interventions, and change leadership, using data-driven capacity building, education, and professional development” (p. 477). For a child welfare agency to achieve its mission, it must attract, develop, and retain a committed, prepared, and skilled workforce. NCWWI’s Workforce Development Framework (http://ncwwi.org/index.php/special-collections/workforce-development-framework) is a comprehensive approach that includes key steps in the workforce development, assessment, and planning process, along with multiple workforce development strategies described on our website (https://ncwwi.org). NCWWI’s knowledge development and dissemination also attend to worker safety and trauma because not only is child welfare one of the most complex practice domains, but it is also one of the highest risk in terms of worker safety.

Stoesz (2016) confuses the NCWWI leadership structure with its 13 funded schools of social work serving as University Partnerships (p. 477). In fact, NCWWI builds on the strategic strengths of 6 universities (along with colleagues affiliated with other universities) to lead and deliver a diverse array of programs, along with knowledge development, evaluation, and dissemination. They are the University at Albany, University of Denver, Michigan State University, University of Maryland, Portland State University, and University of Southern Maine. It should be noted that these universities span the United States. Michigan State University (with colleagues from Fordham University) provides support to 13 separately funded UPs, which were awarded grants competitively to provide baccalaureate and master’s level (BSW and MSW) traineeships and foster the development of evidence-based practices in curriculum and field placements. This is the grant funding sought by Dr. Stoesz and his university.

The University at Albany leads the Leadership Academy for social work deans/directors/chairs and child welfare agency directors (LADDs) who as change leaders promote systemic reforms to advance the preparation and support of an expert, culturally responsive, and inclusive workforce that can effectively deliver high-quality services. Portland State University and the University of Southern Maine lead NCWWI’s Leadership Academies for child welfare middle managers (LAMMs) and child welfare supervisors (LASs), respectively. An added component of this round of NCWWI involves the implementation of a theory-driven, research-supported organizational intervention (OI), which begins with a comprehensive organizational health assessment and promotes effective agency change by using three major strategies: (1) solution-focused design teams for innovation-driven problem solving, (2) consistent leadership engagement regarding systemic change, and (3) development of successful structures for agency-wide communication and change implementation. This multifaceted approach is being implemented in three sites over a 3-year period including San Francisco City/County, Missouri, and Indiana. Recognizing that single interventions are not sufficient and that change-oriented leadership at all levels is critical, NCWWI is implementing the organizational intervention as part of a workforce excellence (WE) approach. This comprises the full range of interventions involving the UPs, LADDs, LAMMs, LASs, and design teams to create organizational-level support for sustained learning and improved practice in child welfare organizations.

Another example of Stoesz’s inaccuracies is his claim that The Children’s Corps is “a NCWWI venture” (p. 480). To the contrary, the Children’s Corps does not receive funding from either NCWWI or the Children’s Bureau. The Children’s Corps is an example of work that Dr. Stoesz claims to support, broadening workforce recruitment to people from many different disciplines, who are interested in the work of child welfare. NCWWI supports these interdisciplinary efforts and is interested in their findings.

Evaluation

The NCWWI evaluation uses rigorous longitudinal, mixed-methods designs to examine the process and progress toward goals, objectives, and outcomes for each of the NCWWI components. Since 2008, quantitative data have been collected from UP students through self-report surveys at multiple time points. Among the many constructs measured, the repeated measurements of participants’ competencies, attitudes about the training, and transfer of learning intentions allow evaluators to gauge knowledge and skill acquisition over time that result from programming and explore the barriers and facilitators to successful transitions from school to work settings. Pre-post Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessments in the WE jurisdictions use standardized measures to identify child welfare agencies’ workforce strengths and gaps that impact functioning of the organization and also measure changes in organizational culture and climate before and after the system-wide intervention.

We supplement our quantitative data collection with participant interviews and focus groups to provide the context for findings. In his opposition to mixed methods, Stoesz seems to have missed the movement in social sciences (including psychology, sociology, mental health, family medicine, and nursing) as well as other disciplines to use both qualitative and quantitative data to answer research questions and to more fully understand the complexity of diverse individuals, groups, and systems. A mixed methods approach is also a more culturally responsive approach to research and evaluation (Creswell & Zhang, 2009). Indeed, the claim that NCWWI’s evaluation strategy avoids “randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the gold standard to determine effectiveness” (Stoesz, 2016, p. 481) alerts the careful reader to a lack of understanding on the author’s part that an randomized controlled trial (RCT) would provide information on efficacy or the way an intervention program would work under controlled conditions. Program effectiveness, or the way it works as administered under “real-world” conditions, is the type of information that is more compelling for programs like NCWWI that serve a diverse and dynamic workforce. Fortunately, the NCWWI evaluators are well versed in conducting RCTs and understand the circumstances under which an RCT is an appropriate design that can reasonably produce “gold standard” findings. Funding for the first round of NCWWI was primarily to establish the programming and evaluate and support implementation and refinement of the interventions. In Round 2, adjustments were made to programming based on Round 1 findings that called for an evaluation approach that focused on the development and integration of programming into local child welfare systems as well as early indicators of efficacy of the intervention (Proctor et al., 2009). Not only would conducting an RCT of NCWWI programs in their early stages of development and implementation be wholly inappropriate and premature, but it would be exceedingly costly to execute on a national scale. The narrow scope of questioning that can be addressed by an RCT and the strict inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants needed to establish internal validity would greatly limit the external validity and generalizability of the results. Yet, at least one program (Mandel School at Case Western Reserve University) is exploring the potential of using an RCT in their agency–university partnership intervention.

Patton (2011) describes developmental evaluation as an innovative approach to support the development and implementation of complex social interventions that yield utilization-focused information to guide program development and understand outcomes. This approach adapts to the complexity of unpredictable social situations rather than trying to falsely impose order and structure in dynamic field settings. In this case, a nonrandomized quasi-experimental pretest/posttest study was the best choice for addressing the questions NCWWI is tasked with answering.

As noted by Stoesz, we introduced the use of 360 assessments in 2013, whereby some participants are offered the opportunity to complete a self-assessment of leadership behaviors linked to the NCWWI Leadership Competency Model. They are able to request feedback from up to nine coworkers, supervisors, and/or supervisees—a method which inherently does not rely solely, “… on self-assessment, which is notoriously unreliable” (Stoesz, 2016, p. 480). Aggregated feedback is presented to participants, with coaching to help them understand and best utilize the feedback. Contrary to Stoesz’s beliefs, the decision to incorporate 360 feedback into the training process was guided by existing scholarship. Thach (2002, p. 206) claims, “… research has confirmed that the use of 360 feedback is one of the best methods to promote increased self-awareness of skill strengths and deficiencies in managers.” Morgan, Cannan, and Cullinane (2005) noted that ensuring that the process is voluntary is among the optimum conditions under which 360s are perceived as positive, thus NCWWI “permits trainees to opt-out if they prefer” (Stoesz, 2016, p. 480). Stoesz’s implication that the NCWWI 360 is used to inform pay or performance reviews is false. The sole purpose of the feedback is to allow leaders to gain insight into others’ perceptions of their leadership strengths and need areas to foster leadership growth as they progress through the program. Stoesz asserts the “dubious value” of 360s on the grounds that child welfare leaders operate in a system where compensation and job duties are determined by public policy and state agencies. It is unclear why he believes that child welfare leaders would not need the same skills to lead their workforce as do leaders in the for-profit sector or benefit from the same learning tools. In fact, through the use of a wait-list control design in two-state agencies, the NCWWI evaluation seeks to answer the empirical question of whether or not 360 feedback is a useful tool for promoting leadership development among child welfare managers. In addition, he assumes child welfare staff are only motivated by compensation. Most participants have many motivations, and compensation is not the highest on their list.

Workforce development and capacity building for leading systems change is a largely new area of inquiry for which no baseline or comparison data exist. Not only does our evaluation of the NCWWI measure knowledge and skill acquisition resulting from child welfare social work education, leadership trainings, and organizational interventions, but this important work contributes knowledge to the field about implementing effective child welfare workforce and leadership change strategies.

Summary

Stoesz has made numerous erroneous claims as well as errors of fact. It is curious that such claims would be advanced until checked for veracity. In the limited space we have been provided, we have responded to some of his spurious assertions. In sum, we take issue with Stoesz’s fundamental claim that the Children’s Bureau should not be aligned with social work. Finally, we have ample evidence of the robustness of our data-informed initiatives and continuous quality improvement approaches which pervade our NCWWI work. We invite readers to view our website (http://ncwwi.org/) and learn more about this innovative, collaborative workforce development and change leadership initiative within the field of child welfare.