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.

The development of a skilled and well-supported social service workforce is particularly important as countries move toward reforming their care systems and work to reduce reliance on residential care, strengthen families, prevent separation and promote family and community-based alternative care options. This is a challenging undertaking that requires social service actors from national to community level who are competent and willing to make changes to the way they deliver care, and are able to establish and manage a new range of preventive and responsive care services to children and families.

Strengthening the social service workforce in any country is complex. It involves creating supportive legislation and policies; developing recruitment, selection, employment, supervision, support and registration procedures; establishing education and training programmes; improving working conditions, ensuring licensing and practice standards; recognizing the status of care professionals; and raising awareness to change mindsets on care.

All of this requires working with a wide range of actors involved in supporting children and families. Substantial allocation (or redirection) of financial resources is also required, to ensure that sufficient numbers of skilled social service workers are available to work directly with children and their families at the community level, as well as at a higher administrative level to oversee care services and regulations.

This section contains documentation of social service workforce development within the context of national care reform and child protection system strengthening, including guidance, lessons learned and training tools.

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Nurturing Strangers: Strategies for Nonviolent Re-parenting of Children in Foster Care

Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon, 03 Dec 2018

Nurturing Strangers focuses on loving nonviolent re-parenting of children in foster care. This book is a jargon-free mix of narrative and real-life case studies, together with the theory and practice of nonviolence.

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Systematic review of staff training in residential childcare; and a grounded theory study of how residential childcare staff make sense of, and use, attachment theory in practice

Ailsa Morison - Edinburgh Research Archive, 30 Nov 2018

This thesis aimed to systematically review literature on the types, measurement and effectiveness of residential staff training, focussed upon psychosocial outcomes.

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Feeling the pressure to take sides: A survey of child protection workers' experiences about responding to allegations of child maltreatment within the context of child custody disputes Author links open overlay panel

Michael Saini, Tara Black, Elisabeth Godbout, Sevil Deljavan - Children and Youth Services Review, 22 Nov 2018

This paper reports on an exploratory cross-sectional online survey of child protection service providers from five child protection agencies that investigates the struggles faced by child protection workers when responding to complaints made by acrimonious ex-partners within the context of child custody disputes.

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Service providers as champions for non-violent childhoods: Service provision for children and parents to achieve an end to corporal punishment

Turid Heiberg, Annabel Egan, and Maria Corbett - Council of Baltic Sea States, 09 Nov 2018

This guidance report reviews the experience of and lessons learned from service provision in social welfare, child protection and childcare, health care, education and law enforcement. It presents methods, tools and service models that have proven effective in preventing and responding to corporal punishment.

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“We're giving you the sack” - Social Workers’ Perspectives of Intervening in Affluent Families When There are Concerns about Child Neglect

Claudia Bernard - The British Journal of Social Work, 01 Nov 2018

Using the findings from a qualitative study, this paper explores social workers’ experiences of intervening in affluent families in the UK when there are child protection concerns.

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Building an Effective Child Protection System in India: Integrating a Rights-Based Perspective in Social Work Education Within a Strategy of Developing Professional Association

Karen Smith Rotabi, Gokul Mandayam, Arlene Manoharan, Archana Mehendale - Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 29 Oct 2018

In this paper, the urgent need to strengthen the child protection system in India is presented in the context of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme and relevant juvenile justice legislation.

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“A Murky Business”: A phenomenological ontology of risk in child protection social work

Smeeton, JK - Qualitative Social Work, 26 Oct 2018

Abstract

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Characteristics of a Relational Child and Youth Care Approach Revisited

Thom Garfat, James Freeman, Kiaras Gharabaghi and Leon Fulcher - CYC Online, 01 Oct 2018

This revision of Relational Child and Youth Care comes after nearly fifteen years from the first expression of the characteristics and is based on extensive feedback and observations from around the world.

Utilising genetically-informed research designs to better understand family processes and child development: implications for adoption and foster-care focused interventions

Sellers, Ruth, Smith, A F, Leve, L D, Nixon, E, Cane, T, Cassell, J A and Harold, G T - Adoption and Fostering, 25 Sep 2018

This paper summarises how genetically-informed research designs can help disentangle genetic from environmental processes underlying psychopathology outcomes for children, and how this evidence can provide improved insights into the development of more effective preventative intervention targets for adoption and foster-care families.

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Care Leavers’ and Their Care Workers’ Views of Preparation and Aftercare Services in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Sue Bond - Emerging Adulthood, 24 Sep 2018

In this qualitative study with four Child and Youth Care Centers in a town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, focus groups were held with young people in care and their care workers to discuss preparation for leaving care and aftercare services and the evaluation of these by each group of participants.

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