2023 State of the Social Service Workforce Report: A Decade of Progress, A Future of Promise

Global Social Service Workforce Alliance

This report examines the evolution of social service workforce strengthening in the light of the three core pillars of the Social Service Workforce Strengthening Framework: planning, developing and supporting. It identifies significant progress and accomplishments that have been made to strengthen the social service workforce at the global level as well as in three specific countries: Romania, Uganda and Viet Nam.

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Learning Brief: Applying the Collaborating, Learning and Adapting Framework

Changing the Way We Care

Since care reform is a long and complex process, requiring collaboration between many diverse actors, with different change pathways in diverse contexts, the Changing the Way We Care initiative set out to learn from different demonstration countries, build national and regional knowledge, and reinforce global momentum for family care. This learning brief describes some of that journey.

This brief shares how the initiative used CLA related to the social service workforce strengthening and case management.

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Mental Health and Wellbeing Interventions for Care-Experienced Children and Young People: Systematic Review and Synthesis of Process Evaluations

Sarah MacDonald, Rob Trubey, Jane Noyes, Soo Vinnicombe, Helen E. Morgan, Simone Willis, Maria Boffey, G.J. Melendez-Torres, Michael Robling, Charlotte Wooder, Rhiannon Evans

This global systematic review incorporated a comprehensive search of available literature from 1990 and captures the extant literature relating to process evaluations for interventions which address care-experienced children and young people’s mental health and well-being, and is one of the first syntheses of process evaluations in social care.

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Resilience Among Children in Foster Care: Variability in Adaptive Functioning and Associated Factors

Pablo Carrera, Maite Román, Jesús M. Jiménez-Morago

This study aimed to explore variability in adaptive functioning in social competence, mental health, and school adjustment in a sample of children in foster care in Spain, and to assess which factors differentiated resilient children (i.e., showing adaptive functioning across domains) from those who were not resilient.

Child Protective Services and Out-of-Home Care for Children During COVID-19: A Scoping Review and Thematic Analysis

Carmit Katz, Afnan Attrash-Najjar, Noa Cohen, Talia Glucklich, Ma'ayan Jacobson, Natalia Varela, Sidnei Rinaldo Priolo-Filho, Annie Bérubé, Olivia D. Chang, Delphine Collin-Vézina, Ansie Fouché, Sadiyya Haffejee, Ilan Katz, Kathryn Maguire-Jack, et al

Limited research has investigated the impact of COVID-19 on Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) and child protective services (CPS) worldwide or explored how CPS overcame the challenges of helping children in OOHC. This review aims to address this gap in the research to unveil the ‘positive legacy’ left by CPS in their work with children in OOHC during COVID-19.

Insight: Disability Inclusion in Kenya's Care Reform

Changing the Way We Care

Disability inclusion means breaking down barriers to promote a society that values diversity and accessibility for everyone. In 2023, Changing the Way We Care Kenya included a disability inclusion reflection learning exercise aimed at collecting views and feedback, and documenting how the initiative had impacted on lives of caregivers and children with disabilities, and how disability issues were be included in the care reform agenda.