Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: Child welfare agencies serve the most vulnerable children and families in the United States. Harnessing the human capital within an organizational system and directing it towards positive organizational development and effective program implementation is essential for agency stability, positive client outcomes, and quality service delivery. In child welfare systems with rampant workforce turnover, human capital is lost resulting in economic and social costs. The causes of turnover have been found to lie along one of three pathways: individual factors, organizational factors and administrative/policy factors. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of an organizational intervention (Design and Improvement Teams (DT)), based on learning organization theory, aimed at ameliorating organizational factors and workforce turnover in child welfare agencies.

Methods: A pre-post quasi-experimental research design was implemented from 2002 through 2005 in seven rural and suburban child welfare systems with turnover rates exceeding 25%. Three agencies completed the intervention and four agencies acted as the comparison group. The sample consisted of 82 child welfare workers with multi disciplinary educational backgrounds. Thirty six workers comprised the intervention group and 46 were from the comparison group. The Workforce Retention Survey was used to measure the outcomes. The one tailed hypotheses assumed that workers in agency systems that received the intervention would have a greater improvement in organizational factors and on intention to leave than the comparison group. Propensity score analysis, logistic regression, McNemar's repeated measures change test, and repeated measures ANCOVA were used in the analysis.

Results: Findings suggest that the DT intervention improves job satisfaction and agency commitment (F=4.0, df=1; p=.049). The design team group did not have a greater improvement in clarity of practice compared to comparison group (F=.717, df=1; p=.400). Additionally, the intervention group was approximately 6 times more likely to report improved perceptions of burnout compared to the comparison group even when controlling for propensity to receive the intervention and supervision (p=.062). The design team systems had a significant improvement over time in intention to leave (p=.031) but the comparison counties did not (p=.388).

Implications for Practice and future research: A stable organizational system may be an obligatory pre-requisite for the success of any child and family treatment intervention. In other words, the most effective practice intervention is doomed to fail in a chaotic organizational system with a high turnover crisis. This is the first study of an organizational intervention aimed at reducing turnover in public child welfare systems. The findings provide support that the implementation of Design Teams in rural and suburban districts may very well reduce turnover through the amelioration of burnout and job satisfaction. These improvements may be a necessary pre-condition to the delivery of effective child welfare services. New and innovative organizational level interventions that address improvement in agency climate, as well as child welfare outcomes need to be developed, implemented and evaluated. Implications for social work education and child welfare practice will be discussed.