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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Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers to Improve Mental Health Outcomes in Orphaned and Vulnerable Children

Carla Sharp, Paulina Kulesz, Lochner Marais, Cilly Shohet, Kholisa Rani, Molefi Lenka, Jan Cloete, Salome Vanwoerden, Deborah Givon & Michael Boivin - Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 05 Mar 2021

The authors of this study conducted a quasi-experimental feasibility trial in South Africa to adapt and evaluate an established year-long semi-structured, manualized video-feedback caregiver intervention (the Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers; MISC) for community-based organizations (CBOs) to equip community-based careworkers with the skills to address the mental health needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC).

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What motivates highly trained child welfare professionals to stay or leave?

Lena Boraggina-Ballard, J. Sobeck, D. Honig - Children and Youth Services Review, 01 Mar 2021

This mixed-methods study used an integrated approach to investigate the drivers that impact the transition from student to child welfare professional and factors that motivated a highly trained cohort of child welfare professionals to stay or leave the child welfare workforce (post one–year employment).

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Training for mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect: Content analysis of state-sponsored curricula

Amy J. L. Baker, Stacie LeBlanc, Trinae Adebayo, Ben Mathews- Child Abuse & Neglect, 20 Jan 2021

This study was designed to evaluate the content of US state-sponsored online mandated reporter training in order to identify gaps and need for improvement in mandated reporter training.

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Examining Cross-Cultural Child Welfare Practice Through Simulation-Based Education

Barbara Lee, Daniel Ji & Michelle O’Kane - Clinical Social Work Journal, 11 Jan 2021

This research examines the intersection of cross-cultural practice and child maltreatment investigations.

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Needs in Social Workers’ Training to Protect the Rights of Children

Olena Karagodina, Olha Baidarova, Viacheslav Fedchenkov, Iryna Pykalo - The New Educational Review, 2021

The study aims to assess the professional training needs of employees of the two institutional actors for the protection of children’s rights in Ukraine; identify factors shaping these needs.

Case Management Tool: Tools for Everyone Supporting Vulnerable Children

Miracle Foundation, 2021

Miracle Foundation's Child-Centered Case Management Toolkit provides hands-on training materials to help you get children safely and permanently into families. For an in-depth understanding of our case management tools and Thrive Scale™ contact safelyhome@miraclefoundation.org.

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Supporting local leadership: Changemakers for Children Platform

Family for Every Child, 2021

Family for Every Child has launched a new social network platform for child rights practitioners, called Changemakers for Children (changemakersforchildren.community). Child rights practitioners are invited to sign-up to the platform and join a global movement of local leaders working in children’s care and protection.

Personal and professional impacts of work-related stress alleviation strategies among child welfare workers in child advocacy center settings

Oliver W. J. Beer, Rebecca Phillips, Megan M. Letson, Kathryn G. Wolf - Children and Youth Services Review, 29 Dec 2020

This study analyzed three open-ended responses from a national online survey examining compassion fatigue in Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) to understand the impact of work-related stress on child welfare workers (CWWs).

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Impacts of policy changes on Care-Leaving Workers in a time of coronavirus: Comparative analysis of discretion and constraints

Mary Elizabeth Collins & Astraea Augsberger - Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice , 27 Dec 2020

This policy analysis examines the impact of COVID-19 policy guidance on the role of workers who provide outreach to transition-age care leavers.

Secondary traumatic stress, burnout and compassion satisfaction among Flemish foster care workers during the COVID-19 lockdown

Camille Verheyden, Frank Van Holen, Delphine West, and Johan Vanderfaeillie - Developmental Child Welfare, 20 Dec 2020

This study examines secondary traumatic stress (STS), burnout and compassion satisfaction (CS) in Flemish foster care workers (FCW) during the COVID-19 lockdown.