Decades of data document that permanent placements of children in the welfare system has been a concern in Mississippi. As foster care rates increase, more children are awaiting placement. Researchers have linked child welfare workers' educational background to placement outcomes for foster care children; however, researchers have not addressed the relationship between child welfare workers' educational backgrounds and foster care placement outcomes in Mississippi. This quantitative study examined the educational backgrounds of social work and nonsocial work child welfare caseworkers and other factors such as children's gender and race as predictors in placement outcomes for children in welfare custody. Attachment theory was used to explain parent-child relationships and the importance of permanent, safe, and nurturing homes for children in the child welfare system. Secondary data were used from the 2017 archival records for 176 child welfare caseworkers' caseloads in the Mississippi Department of Child Protective Services (MDCPS). A simple linear and multiple regression analysis was used to examine child welfare caseworkers' educational background and children's gender and race as predictors for the length of stay in placement outcomes. The results revealed that caseworkers' educational backgrounds were not a significant predictor of placement outcomes but gender and race combined were significant in predicting the length of stay in placement outcomes for children in custody. Results from this study could promote positive social change within MDCPS by providing data to inform agency policy and procedures for child welfare practice, which could then result in more timely placements of reunification or adoption for children in the welfare system who are currently spending 36 months or more in traditional foster care.

The purpose of this essay is to describe the organization of the Swedish Animal WelfareAgency during the time it was in operation. The Swedish Animal Welfare Agency was established in 2005 by the government who saw it as necessary in order to strengthen the protection of cruelty to animals in Sweden. However, the agency was shut down already in2007 and its responsibilities as an agency was moved back to the government and the department of agriculture. During its time in operation, the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency, received much criticism, among other things because of its interpretations of the law which were seen as too focused on details and thus “bureaucratic”. In order to describe the organization of the agency the theoretical approach of this study is based on three of Bo Rothstein’s ideal administration models; the legal bureaucratic, thepolitical oriented and the user oriented model. The purpose is to see which one of these ideal administrations the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency was most like, through an organizational perspective. There will also be a comparison over time, from the establishing to the shutting down of the agency in order to see if the organization of the agency had changed over time. The method used for this paper is a qualitative text-based analysis where the central arguments concerning the organization of the agency will be highlighted and interpreted from the different criteria of the administration models. The study showed that the organization of the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency can be described as a legal bureaucratic administration. The comparison over time showed that the organization of the agency did not change, it could be described as legal bureaucratic when it was established as well as when it was shut down. This shows that the criticism of the agency of being too “bureaucratic” might be justified but the legitimacy of the agency’s organization was based on bureaucratic principles.