Social Service Workforce Strengthening

A strong social service workforce is critical to meeting the needs of children without adequate family care.  From government policy-makers, local administrators, researchers and social workers, to educators, community workers and care providers, social service actors play a key role in protecting girls and boys and promoting their care.

Displaying 171 - 180 of 477

Fred Wulczyn, Sara Feldman, and Scott Huhr - Center for State Child Welfare Data, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago,

For this evaluation, the authors asked whether the rate of exit to permanency increased for children whose time in foster care in New York City coincided with when private foster care agencies reached the new reduced caseload target.

Marianna L. Colvin & Heather M. Thompson - The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research,

The importance of mental and behavioral health for child welfare clients is well-documented; yet, little is known about the challenges therapeutic service providers (TSPs) experience working in child welfare practice. To explore this topic, five focus groups were conducted with 40 TSPs in a contracted mental and behavioral health agency and data were analyzed following an inductive thematic process.

Youngsoon Chung & Hyekyung Choo - Children and Youth Services Review,

This study aimed to identify the interrelationships of risk and protective factors, job satisfaction and burnout to child protection workers' intent to leave, the relative impact between job satisfaction and burnout on intent to leave, and their mediating roles for the risk and protective factors.

Sharynne Hamilton, Deborah Cleland, Valerie Braithwaite - Community Development Journal,

Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifteen community workers, who represent nine agencies assisting families with child protection issues in a small jurisdiction in Australia, the authors of this article show how the stigma attached to ‘bad’ parents is passed on to the community workers who are supporting them.

Wendy Haight, Cary Waubanascum, David Glesener, Priscilla Day, Brenda Bussey, Karen Nichols - Children and Youth Services Review,

This research addresses one of the most pressing and controversial issues facing child welfare policymakers and practitioners today: the dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous families in North American public child welfare systems. The article presents a successful model of inclusive education: the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies (the Center) at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, School of Social Work.

Lisa Langenderfer-Magruder, Cassandra Olson, Dina J. Wilke, Lucas Alven - Journal of Interpersonal Violence,

This study explores the qualitative responses of child welfare workers in Florida to understand their collaboration experiences, focusing specifically on their perceptions of facilitative factors of collaboration with Intimate partner violence (IPV) services.

Mugumbate, Jacob and Chereni, Admire - African Journal of Social Work,

This article discusses the use of Ubuntu theory in social work with children in Africa.

Clara Siagian, Sandra Arifiani, Putri Amanda and Santi Kusumaningrum - Social Sciences,

This open access article explores the construction of childhood and parenthood in rural communities in Indonesia based on a series of focus group discussions with service providers, community decision makers, and paraprofessionals; a group that the authors refer to as “frontline providers”.

Ellen Syrstad & Ottar Ness - Contemporary Family Therapy,

This article examines the professional identities of family therapists employed by Family Counselling Services (FCS) in Norway and their experiences providing therapeutic services to parents whose children are placed in public care.

Tom Disney, Lisa Warwick, Harry Ferguson, Jadwiga Leigh, Tarsem Singh Cooner, Liz Beddoe, Phil Jones, Tess Osborne - Children and Youth Services Review,

This paper reports on innovative research methods using GPS [Global Positioning System] devices that can trace social workers' mobilities and explore the use of office space, home working and visits to families in two English social work departments. This article presents unique findings that reveal how mobile working is shaping social care practitioner wellbeing and practice.