Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / It is not a new phenomenon that there is a high turnover rate among social workers. In particular, child welfare has shown the highest rates of staff turnover. To address the issue, turnover and retention of child welfare workers have been studied for decades. The history of research produced a long list of determinants for child welfare worker turnover, more than 20 factors, and showed conflicting findings with the same variables. Moreover, the long list of factors for workers’ decisions to leave has poorly contributed to organizational practices for retaining child welfare workers. Therefore, this study aims to examine organizational factors, particularly leadership, for child welfare worker turnover intention, in order to help child welfare agencies to invent a practice model to prevent qualified worker’s turnover. To do so, it is important to examine the effect of organizational commitment on employees’ turnover intention. Therefore, following is the primary research question: Does the use of transformational leadership style in social work organizations explain child welfare worker turnover intention? A cross-sectional survey research was employed among workers in public child welfare agencies in a Midwest state, United States (N=214). Five models were examined in terms of the direct and indirect effects of transformational leadership on turnover intention of child welfare workers using STATA ver. 15. The study finding showed that transformational leadership styles of local office directors had a direct and negative effect on child welfare workers’ turnover intention. As a result, this study recommends that child welfare provide local office directors with leadership training to reduce preventable turnover of child welfare workers. However, the findings should be cautiously interpreted due to the sampling strategy used in this study.

The purpose of this study was to develop and test the Experience of Supervision Scale, which measures the experience of supervisory behaviors from the perspective of child welfare workers. Child welfare supervision is gaining increased attention as states struggle to improve performance measures of their child welfare systems. However, the lack of a standardized instrument which measures supervision through an analysis of supervisory behaviors from the supervisee’s perspective has hindered efforts in these areas. The Experience of Supervision Scale is based on Kadushin’s three function casework supervision model of supervision (administrative, educational, and supportive) which was chosen as the theoretical framework due to this model’s emphasis on public agency clinical case work practice. Scale items were generated through focus groups of child welfare workers and supervisors. Items were reviewed by an expert panel and the scale was then administered to a statewide sample of 165 child welfare workers. The refined Experience of Supervision Scale consists of 32 items. In this study, it demonstrated high internal consistency with a Cronbach’s alpha of .962. Factor analysis yielded a three factor solution consistent with the casework model of supervision’s structure, while also suggesting slight modifications to the model. The three factors derived included: Performance Support, Emotional support/Availability, and Administrative activities. The results of this study suggest that the Experience of Supervision Scale has appropriate psychometric properties for use in complex research in which casework supervision is a variable.

High turnover of child welfare workers is a problem to the children and families that receive services and the child welfare organizations that lose their staff. For children and their families, turnover of their assigned worker may interrupt their ability to achieve their permanency goals. Child welfare organizations encounter high costs for hiring staff due to the turnover and the staff that remain suffer with higher caseloads and not being able to provide the quality of services that they should be able to offer. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of child welfare workers who remained with the same employer for 3 years or more. The conceptual framework consisted of 2 theories: organizational climate and organizational culture theory. Two focus groups, consisting of 3 participants from an urban community and 5 participants from a rural community, were used. A snowball sampling method was used to obtain the sample. A content analysis was conducted to discover major and minor themes. This study revealed that 5 factors contribute toward retention: a) caseload size; b) educational background and training; c) recruitment, screening, and selection; d) supervisory support; and e) peer support were supported by all 8 participants. In addition, a new factor of self-care emerged as a result of this study. While all the child welfare workers experienced all the factors that could have resulted in their turnover, due to implementation of self-care techniques they ended up remaining from 3 years to 13 years. Exploring self-care as an answer toward retention is worth exploring and can contribute toward social change in the field of child welfare.