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 191 - 200 of 490

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.

Ashley Curry - Children and Youth Services Review,

This study explores the lived experience of child welfare worker turnover from the child's perspective, adding an important and underrepresented voice in the literature.

UNICEF & Global Social Service Workforce Alliance,

These guidelines are informed by evidence of ‘what works’ and lessons learned in the field. They are designed to accelerate UNICEF regional and country offices’ programming on social service workforce strengthening, and support work to better plan, develop and support the social services workforce with national and regional partners.

Trupti Rao, Elizabeth Reiman, Ashley Ausikaitis - Social Work,

In this exploratory study, through use of an online anonymous survey, local county child welfare caseworkers were asked to self-rate their knowledge of, exposure to, and comfort levels with children with developmental disabilities.

Donald Forrester, David Westlake, Mike Killian, Vivi Antonopolou, Michelle McCann, Angela Thurnham, Roma Thomas, Charlotte Waits, Charlotte Whittaker, Douglas Hutchison - The British Journal of Social Work,

Communication skills are fundamental to social work, yet few studies have directly evaluated their impact. This study explores the relationship between skills and outcomes in 127 families. 

Christian M. Connell, Christopher T. Bory, Cindy Y. Huang, Maegan Genovese, Colleen Caron, Jacob Kraemer Tebes - Children and Youth Services Review,

This study examined the relationship of caseworker ratings of risk across multiple domains to youth functioning and service use for a sample of children open to the child welfare system.

Lieselot De Wilde, Jochen Devlieghere, Michel Vandenbroeck, Bruno Vanobbergen - Children and Youth Services Review,

This articles presents an analysis of 33 semi-structured interviews with foster families in Flanders, exploring the tensions between voluntaristic and professionalising tendencies in foster care.

Emily Keddell, Ian Hyslop - Child & Family Social Work,

Indigenous children have a long history of overrepresentation in child protection systems. This exploratory, mixed methods study examined practitioner perceptions of risk in response to client ethnic group.