Title IV-E Child Welfare Education

Impact on Workers, Case Outcomes and Social Work Curriculum Development

Patrick Leung,Monit Cheung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000769906
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Culture sur le lieu de travail

BSW/MSW education funded by Title IV-E of Social Security Act ("Title IV-E Child Welfare Education") is an important incentive to encourage social workers to stay in the child protection field. It aims to demonstrate the training partnership between universities and public child welfare agencies.

This book contains essential research results with a focus on the impact of Title IV-E Child Welfare Education to improve worker capacities and case outcomes, as well as on the process and results of social work education in promoting public child welfare work. There are nine chapters written by renowned researchers in public child welfare who applied rigorous quantitative and/or qualitative methodologies to clearly describe measures used, data sources, outcome variables, and implications for education, practice, policy, and research. These evidence-based articles address the following child welfare topics: training partnerships and worker outcomes, effective pedagogy and online education, workplace climate and retention factors, and other topics connecting BSW/MSW education to public child welfare practice. Future child welfare education will need to further expand child welfare knowledge and skills, strengthen worker competencies with a strong commitment to social work values and ethical practice principles, and develop a cohesive supervisory network to build a workforce with positive attitude toward child protection programs.

This collection will inform child welfare educators, administrators and legislators regarding the impact of Title IV-E Child Welfare Education on the development of public child welfare and make recommendations to improve the child welfare curriculum in social work education.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Public Child Welfare.

What’s in an MSW? Graduate education for public child welfare workers, intention, engagement, and work environment

Ericka Deglau, Ayse Akincigil, Anasuya Ray, and Jennifer Bauwens

ABSTRACT
This study employs a mixed methods analysis of exit survey data gathered from public child welfare employees at their completion of a Title IV-E funded MSW program, distinct because it was initiated during a period of major reform and permitted students to continue employment during their studies. Findings suggest that opportunities for growth and manageable levels of stress were associated with intentions to stay and engagement with the work, reflected in respondents’ positive perceptions of their roles in the work environment and their retrospective assessments of the impact of their social work education.

Introduction

The principle objectives of Title IV-E partnerships between social work educational institutions and state public child welfare agencies are to enhance the skill level of the workforce and to improve retention. A fairly extensive literature, described by Zlotnik, DePanfilis, Daining, and McDermott Lane (2005), examines outcomes in both these areas. Parallel work has delineated factors antecedent to turnover in the wider workforce (Benton, 2016; Mor Barak, Levin, Nissly, & Lane, 2006) and led to the exploration of employee engagement or withdrawal from the job, the latter often a precursor to leaving. These studies suggest that work environment, the presence or absence of social supports, and stress levels are inherent both to intentions to leave or stay (Nissly, Barak, & Levin, 2005) and to engagement with the work (Travis, Lizano, & Mor Barak, 2016).

The present study seeks to explore career intentions and engagement among public child welfare employees who obtained their Master of Social Work through a IV-E partnership. The program was unique in that it was launched during a period of major reform for its partner agency and designed to permit participants, who attended classes exclusively with other public child welfare employees, to continue full-time employment while in school (Deglau et al., 2015). Programmatic outcomes have been examined for IV-E partnerships that include employees among their participants. However, the particular circumstances of the program reviewed here make the translation of previous findings problematic and dictate the need for separate study.

The objective of the study is, through secondary analyses of data collected in an exit survey administered to program participants as they completed their MSWs, to examine relationships between participant career intentions, work environment, and engagement with the work. This objective is achieved through quantitative analysis of career intentions, workplace environmental variables and personal characteristics, and qualitative analysis of participants’ responses to open-ended questions concerning their future plans and their reflections about their workplace and educational experiences.

Literature review

This study builds on work that has examined the effects of workplace environment on retention and engagement, as well as a smaller body of qualitative research on the experiences and motivations of public child welfare employees who have sought advanced social work education.

Retention, intention, and engagement

Research on retention, for both specially educated social workers (Cahalane & Sites, 2008; Dickinson & Perry, 2002; Gansle & Ellett, 2002; Jones, 2002; Scannapieco & Connell-Carrick, 2003) and the general child welfare workforce, seeks to predict turnover by examining how environmental factors, such as work conditions, organizational culture and climate, and personal characteristics combine to create conditions in which public child welfare workers might stay or leave (Bednar, 2003; Blome & Steib, 2014; Ellett, 2009; Faller, Grabarek, & Ortega, 2010; Lee, Forster, & Rehner, 2011; Scannapieco & Connell-Carrick, 2007; Shim, 2010; Williams, Nichols, Kirk, & Wilson, 2011; Yankeelov, Barbee, Sullivan, & Antle, 2009; Zeitlin, Augsberger, Auerbach, & McGowan, 2014). Attention to supervisory and work group support, the organizational environment in proximity, has demonstrated effects on turnover, although these have not always been uniform (Collins-Camargo & Royse, 2010; Kruzich, Mienko, & Courtney, 2014; Landsman, 2007; Smith, 2005). Several researchers (Johnco, Salloum, Olson, & Edwards, 2014; Thompson, Wojciak, & Cooley, 2017; Westbrook, Ellis, & Ellet, 2006) provide insight on retention factors by examining public child welfare employees’ perceptions directly.

Much of the work on retention and turnover relies on data about intention, rather than actual departure, a relationship that is not necessarily congruent. Recent work raises the equally important construct of engagement with the work, whether or not actual departure ensues. Drawing on research focused on the antecedents of leaving, particularly as they relate to job stress, job satisfaction, and the presence or absence of social and relational support (Lizano & Mor Barak, 2012; Mor Barak, Levin, Nissly, & Lane, 2006; Nissly et al., 2005), some researchers have begun to distinguish varying levels of intention with action (Fernandes, 2016; Griffiths, Royse, Culver, Piescher, & Zhang, 2017).

Interest in the circumstances under which child welfare workers assume active and engaged roles in the workplace or withdraw and disengage (Travis, Gomez, & Mor Barak, 2011; Travis & Mor Barak, 2010) has initiated a new direction in the research that is of particular interest to this study. Organizational supports that encourage engaged practice (Kim & Mor Barak, 2015) and workplace inclusion (Brimhall et al., 2017; Mor Barak et al., 2016) have evident implications for sustaining quality practice. Closely related to the notion of active engagement in the workplace is that of the social capital achieved through inclusion in decision-making, professional autonomy, and relational supports, which can mean the difference between thriving in the organization and just persevering (Boyas & Wind, 2010; Boyas, Wind, & Kang, 2012; Boyas, Wind, & Ruiz, 2013, 2015).

Public child welfare employees and social work education

Social workers appear to have several advantages over their nonsocial work peers in terms of both retention and preparation, performance, and overall confidence in their abilities to meaningfully affect families (Bagdasaryan, 2012; Hartinger-Saunders & Lyons, 2013; Jones & Okamura, 2000; Mathias, Gilman, Shin, & Evans, 2015; Reed-Ashcraft, Westbrook, & Williams, 2012). Among MSW graduates, public child welfare employees may have additional advantages over their less experienced peers. Because of their familiarity with the work and the organization, they may be better equipped to tolerate potential dissonance between what they learned in their MSW education and the experience on the ground, have greater facility to find allies and supports within the agency, and thus be better able to exercise influence (Lewandowski, 1998; Whitaker & Clark, 2006).

Some studies suggest that public child welfare employees who pursue social work education develop relationships, networks, and social capital during their studies that may contribute to their later roles in the agency. Altman and Cohen (2016), for example, note the importance of relational aspects of studying together in cohorts. Studies by Auerbach, McGowan, and Laporte (2008), Hopkins, Mudrick, ...