Child welfare agencies face challenges in recruiting and retaining child welfare professionals. Having enough qualified staff helps agencies deliver quality services to families and improve outcomes for children and families.
Helping potential staff better understand their role in the agency and the demands of child welfare can increase job satisfaction and reduce turnover. Strategies for screening candidates and communicating expectations include realistic job previews or short videos that present the rewards and demands of child welfare positions.
Agencies with a positive organizational culture attract and support diverse employees and encourage practices based on cultural curiosity and equity. A diverse workforce that reflects the communities it serves and whose engaged practice is rooted in equity helps demonstrate an agency's commitment to partnering with families.
A healthy organizational culture, including shared beliefs, values, and goals, can increase job satisfaction and prevent burnout for child welfare professionals. Access to supports that address secondary trauma also contributes to well-being as well as burnout prevention. Additionally, organizational culture includes the quality of supervision, supervisory support, and access to education and training.
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Supporting Child Welfare Staff: The Critical First Three Months
Reviews the importance of the first 3 months of employment for child welfare workers, highlighting secondary traumatic stress and the importance of reducing it to decrease turnover.
Recruitment
Find information on recruitment from the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development and learn why recruitment is important and how it can be improved.
Strategies to Improve Child Welfare Worker Retention
Learn about several strategies being tested by the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development to improve worker retention and strengthen the child welfare workforce.
Attracting and Hiring Workers: Evidence-Informed Strategies Webinar
View a webinar that presents a recruitment framework, discusses recruitment strategies, and shares strategies to measure recruitment efforts.
Supervising for Quality Child Welfare Practice
Read an overview of child welfare supervision and learn about the dimensions of supervision that agencies may want to consider as they seek to strengthen the effectiveness of their services to children and families with examples of States' efforts.
Coaching in Child Welfare
Helps child welfare administrators, managers, and supervisors understand the potential role of coaching in supporting their workforce. Drawing from available research, this issue brief discusses coaching functions, effectiveness, models, and strategi ...Read More
Job Posting
Offers guidance on how to create an informative, clear, transparent, and appealing job posting for organizations seeking child welfare job candidates.
CFPM Recruitment and Selection Best Practices (w/ Tip Sheets)
Find information on best practices for recruitment and selection of child welfare staff who will deliver the Child and Family Practice Model with the children and families being served.
Workforce Development Framework
Read a framework developed by the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute to provide guidance to the field of child welfare on how to enhance leadership and strengthen the child welfare workforce.