Parent Engagement: The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Child Welfare Practice and Parental Buy-in

Purpose: Engaging parents in child welfare services is a long-standing challenge due to parents' involuntary status, the nature of the issues bringing them to agency attention (Alpert, 2005; Littell, Alexander & Reynolds, 2001), and their prior, often negative, experiences with such institutions (Kerkorian, McKay, & Bannon, 2006). Kemp et al.'s (2009) multi-level typology of parent engagement lays the conceptual foundation for understanding the relationship between parent engagement and parent, worker, and organizational factors. The study described here makes use of a large statewide survey of child welfare involved parents and their social workers to test components of the model. The dependent variable of interest is the extent to which the parent has bought-in to the need for child welfare involvement. Buy-in, defined as the parent's ability to see issues similarly to the worker and agency and to recognize the need for services, has been linked to worker recommendations to reunify (Holland, 2000). In this study it is theorized that worker and organizational characteristics influence a worker's use of strength-based strategies, and that worker strategies and parent characteristics affect parent buy-in, with potential implications for reunification.

Methods: Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a statewide sample of primary caregivers whose children were either in out-of-home care or receiving in-home supervision from the public child welfare agency (n = 809; response rate = 82%). A web-based survey of all case carrying social workers in the agency was also conducted (n = 969; response rate = 96%). Parent and social worker records were linked in 680 cases, which constitutes the sample for the analysis. Path analysis was employed to examine the direct effects of worker background characteristics, supervisory support, organizational characteristics, and team climate on strengths based casework; and the indirect effects of worker and workplace context and direct effects of strength based practice and caregiver characteristics on caregiver buy-in.

Results: (Standardized estimates) Strength based practices (R2 = .06): Workers who reported feeling more positively challenged by their work were associated with caregivers' reports of workers' use of strengths based practices (-.16 p≤ .01). Caregivers with at least one child in out-of-home placement were less likely to report that their worker used strengths-based practices (.37 p≤ .01). Buy-in (R2 = .43): Caregiver buy-in was, as expected, associated with workers use of strengths based practices (.63 p≤.01). Buy-in was also indirectly— via strengths—positively associated with workers' feeling challenged by their work (10 p≤.01), and negatively associated with out-of-home placement (-.12 p≤.01). Buy-in was more likely for caregivers who reported fewer hardships (-.10 p≤.01) and those who did not report substance abuse issues (-.19 p≤.01).

Implications: The analysis confirms a strong and positive relationship between parents' perception of workers' use of a strengths-based approach and client buy-in. Furthermore, parent characteristics rather than worker or organizational factors figured prominently in parent-endorsed need for child welfare involvement. By demonstrating a connection between worker strategies, parental perceptions, and parental buy-in, the study points to the potential for strengths-based practice to support engagement and thus reunification.