Strengthening Public Child Welfare: Evaluation of a Scholarship Program for Undergraduate Social Work Graduates in New York State

Background & purpose Public human service agencies are constantly challenged to recruit and retain qualified workers especially in the child welfare field (Fox, Miller, & Barbee, 2003). Title IV-E has worked to address this issue by providing funding to educate social workers, specifically in the child welfare field. Research indicates people who receive Title IV-E funding have more knowledge about the child welfare field than those who don't (Auerbach, McGowan, & LaPorte, 2007; Franke, Bagdasaryan, & Furman, 2009; Gansle & Ellett, 2002). Graduates also express more confidence in their abilities than their counterparts with no specialized training (Jones & Okamura, 2000) and graduates generally agree that a Title IV education trained them for child welfare work (O'Donnell & Kirkner, 2009). This longitudinal study evaluates the effectiveness of a New York State pilot by analyzing knowledge, self-efficacy and collective self-efficacy of all BSW Title IV-E recipients across the state. This study investigated the level of knowledge recipients gained from the program and from their child welfare working experience. Recipients' self-efficacy and collective self-efficacy were compared with co-workers who also worked in child welfare. Methods The sample consisted of all BSW students within the state of New York who had received Title IV-E funding and then went on to work in a child welfare agency. The students were asked to complete three questionnaires: a demographic questionnaire, Knowledge in Child Welfare, and the Self-Efficacy Scales. Students complete the Knowledge and Efficacy measures at the beginning and the end of the academic program. As workers, BSW graduates are asked to complete Self-Efficacy Scale and Worker's questionnaire when they are 6, 18, and 30 months into the job. Their co-workers are also requested to complete Self-Efficacy Scale at the same times. Longitudinal one-group pretest posttest design and comparison group designs were used. Results The study found the majority of BSW scholarship recipients (66.7%, n = 36) had improved Personal Self-Efficacy, and the paired sample t-test indicated that this improvement was statistically significant (t=-2.85, df=35, sig.= .007). The Personal Self-efficacy of the BSW scholarship recipients also improved for a large majority of students from six months to one year during the field placement. ANOVA tests also indicated that there were no significant differences in personal self-efficacy, collective self-efficacy and efficacy between the BSW scholarship recipients and their co-workers (n = 94).

Conclusions Ellett (2009) found that self-efficacy was an important factor in the retention of child welfare workers, and Nota et al (2007) study found that being able to work collectively and in a collaborative manner with co-workers increased self-efficacy and quality of life. At this stage, the findings of this study appear to be consistent with these other studies. The next step would be to provide an opportunity to repeat the analysis with larger samples.