The child welfare sector has been dealing with the issue of turnover for many years and it has yet to implement effective solutions to mitigate the problem. In this study, the researcher used a post-positivist approach to examine contributing factors that affect job longevity in child welfare. The researcher reviewed literature as well as used motivation and organizational support theory to determine what potential factors influence job longevity among child welfare social workers. The researcher gathered demographic information and qualitative data from ten interviews with child welfare social workers employed by the County of Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) with five or more years of experience. The researcher conducted a content analysis of the data and identified three common themes that influence job longevity; supervisor support, self-gratification as a child welfare social worker, and self-care. Results showed that the impact of longevity at DCFS is strongly influenced by supervisor support and self-gratification suggesting a strong desire of child welfare social workers to willingly want to do the job and that supervisor support is one contributing factor to longevity. In addition, nearly all the participants identified self-care as having a positive impact on child welfare social workers. These findings suggest that child welfare social workers need additional training's, individual time with their supervisors, and self-care to increase longevity.

Resource Family Approval (RFA) is a policy that was recently enacted in California. The process seeks to merge existing policies on the regulations of families who wish to care for children involved in the foster care system. The purpose of this study was to understand the perceptions of resource family approval social workers and the implementation of RFA. Ten participants were chosen from the resource family approval unit from a county child welfare agency. The study was a qualitative design with in person interviews. Common themes emerged in responses to social worker's thoughts about RFA, social worker's ideas for preparing other workers, families and the agency, and advice to new workers in RFA. The study found that participants had mixed responses regarding their own thoughts about RFA. The majority of the participants in the study felt that RFA was good in theory but not in execution. The study also revealed that RFA workers needed to be open-minded and focus on communicating with all parties involved in RFA. One of the recommendations is for policy makers to assess the effectiveness of the policy before enacting changes and give the policy time to work itself out before trying to change things so often. Another recommendation is that it is critical to offer ongoing trainings to both the workers and the families for RFA to be implemented and run smoothly and effectively within the community.

Foster children are already at a disadvantage given that they tend to live in a home without their parents. Social workers have direct interactions working with children with special needs, and through interviews with the workers, we aimed to understand whether or not the services available are able to meet foster children’s special needs. The research on special needs children in foster care is quite limited. The purpose of the study was to identify social workers’ perceptions of the needs of special needs foster children and their access to services. This study used qualitative interviews with open-ended questions to gather qualitative data from ten social worker participants. The researchers employed thematic analysis techniques to analyze the qualitative data. The themes that emerged from analyzing the data were social workers’ challenges in providing services to special needs foster children, social workers’ access to services, and the need for institutional support to effectively manage service delivery for special needs foster children. This study found that social workers face challenges in obtaining training for parents and social workers, navigating complex funding processes, managing inconsistent desires between parents and court officials, and dealing with the limited number of capable foster homes. The social workers interviewed identified different tactics that could be implemented in order to improve services for the special needs foster children through changes and improvements within the department. Understanding large-scale policy and practice issues, such as organizational change or resource management, can lead county agency social workers to advocate for the challenges of special needs children in child welfare.

This study deals with the issue of comnunication barriers between white social work students and black and chicano clients, which represent the largest minority group in the United States.

Burnout among child welfare social workers negatively affects social workers and the social welfare system. The purpose of this action research study was to explore what child welfare social workers do to alleviate burnout. The practice-focused research questions for this study center on two elements: (a) the experiences of burnout among child welfare social workers employed by the Department of Family and Children services in the southeastern region of the United States and (b) the social work practices used to alleviate burnout. The conceptual framework for this study was the Maslach theory on burnout. Action research study procedures were used to facilitate analysis of the research problem. Data were collected using semistructured questions administered to 6 child welfare social workers in a focus group. The selection criteria for the child welfare social workers were social workers who work for the department of children and family services for at least 6 months. The data were transcribed verbatim from an audio recording. Codes were assigned to the data and reliability checks were conducted. The themes that emerged from analysis of the data included workload, lack of influence on the job, lack of rewards on the job, negative social interaction, and value differences in individuals and their jobs. The findings of this study might contribute to positive social change by enhancing awareness regarding burnout in child welfare social workers and providing an opportunity for child welfare social workers and child welfare agencies to learn how to address causes of burnout in child welfare social workers in the southeastern United States.

Active school social workers are tasked with teaching social-emotional learning to students, including high need youth placed in alternative education settings. Multitiered systems of support provide a framework utilized by school systems to identify and address all student needs. However, a gap in research exists for evidenced-based social-emotional learning practices for students falling within Tier 3 of the multitiered systems of support framework, particularly those separated from the mainstream population and educated in alternative programs. This study explored how school social workers address the social-emotional learning needs of students in alternative education settings within the state of Illinois. The qualitative case-study design used a purposive sample of school social workers. Data sources included individual semistructured and focus group interviews of school social workers, and program curricula materials. Data analysis followed the constructivist perspective that multiple explanations of reality exist and, therefore, knowledge is constructed and emerges through the social practices and interpretations of people. Results indicated that school social workers in Illinois struggle to find existing evidence-based interventions to meet the social-emotional learning needs of high-school students in alternative education due to limited resources. Social work services maintain a student-driven focus and are strengthened by school-wide systemic structures for social-emotional learning that include cohesive efforts among staff and time for individual student processing of behaviors. This research has potential for social change through expanding knowledge available for school social work practitioners to meet the social-emotional learning needs of students in alternative education.

This PhD project is undertaken by publication and thus this exegesis offers an explication and linking interpretation of the publications and DVD's listed in section two. The exegesis 'frames-up' what has been an ongoing interpretive inquiry exploring constructive frontline child protection social work undertaken by the author in collaboration with practitioners in Europe, North America and Australasia that has given rise to the publications and DVDs. Taking the lead from Geertz's ideas of interpretive anthropology the aim of this inquiry and publication work is to develop descriptions and theories of practice drawing upon insiders' local knowledges and sense-making of what constitutes good child protection social work. 'The natives' or insiders toward which this interpretive project directs its attention are first and foremost, frontline child protection social workers and wherever possible the child protection service recipients who have experienced the practice of those workers. The publication component of this project is a vital and integrated part of the research process since it is through the writing and production work that the usually overlooked, often deemed 'tacit' knowledges of service delivers and recipients are brought into the formal domain and made accessible to others. / This project is undertaken with transformative intent. The first intent being to distil the wisdom of insiders' knowledges into richly detailed formal accounts of good practice that speaks directly to the practitioner's condition thereby enhancing their professional reflexivity, hope and capacity. The second intent is to provide constructive on-the-ground 'news of difference' for a child protection field that is over-organised by anxiety, worst-case outcomes and an obsession with managers' measures. The exegesis is formulated around the research question, What potential does interpretive social theory have for transforming child protection social work? My conclusion is that while interpretive social theory offers significant epistemological and methodological resources for transforming the practices and orientation of child protection social work, this potential will not be realised until the social work displays renewed ontological commitment and faith in the knowledges and everyday experience of frontline practitioners.

This research study investigates self-identified feminist social workers??? conceptualizations of spirituality, how spirituality influences their practices, and their ideas about the effects of spiritually influenced practice. There is increasing interest in exploring and considering spirituality across social work approaches, accompanied by a strong demand for empirical research and the development of knowledge in this area. The past few years in particular have witnessed an expanding social work literature that discusses the incorporation of spirituality into practice. In this thesis spirituality refers to a complex construct that can be deeply personal and/or communal, and that can encompass a sense of connection with something bigger that transcends ordinary life experience. In order to examine spirituality in the context of feminist social work practice, the goals of this study needed to be exploratory and demanded the use of a qualitative methodology. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with twenty experienced direct practice social workers. Grounded theory analysis of the interview data uncovered surprising and significant convergences amongst research participants??? beliefs, values and practices. These unexpected commonalities invited a further analysis of the data that produced a set of practice principles. These practice principles reflected the participants??? understandings of spirituality and basic values, their ideas about processes of spiritual development and beliefs about the spiritual essence of human life, and their spiritually influenced practice methods and relationships. The process of developing practice principles included further data collection through the written feedback of participants and the use of three focus groups. This second round of data collection and analysis extended and refined the practice principles. The practice principles are particularly relevant for social work because they are based in the participants??? collective practice wisdom and represent an important step towards helping to legitimize spiritual knowledge. The practice principles also have important implications for social work practice, education and research in that they can promote discussions about spirituality, guide practice, provide a base for the future development of spiritually influenced models and frameworks, and direct curriculum development.

The dissertation presents the argument that the formal training of a professional social worker is relevant but not equivalent to the training needs of a professional manager in the social work field. Social work professionals as managers do not, without management training, have the same credibility and/or skills as professional managers of social work. Within the general topic of welfare, research is first directed to the Australian welfare experience in its historic sense. Selecting relevant philosophical and ideological frameworks the writer a) critically explores traditional and contemporary theories, with special reference being made to bureaucracy, organization, and management; b) investigates theories and practices of social workers and social work managers to ascertain their relevance to contemporary Australian society, using the A.C.T. Family Services Branch as an example of a social welfare agency. This assists in explaining the context, functions and obligations of a welfare agency, as it responds to the needs of the community and of the staff it employs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-104).