The Role of Racial/Ethnic Matching of Caseworker-Client Dyads and Professionalism in Client Satisfaction: Moderating Effects of Engagement and Stress in Child Welfare Agencies
As racial/ethnic diversity has become salient in the child welfare system, how child welfare agencies can respond to the racial/ethnic diversity of clients has been paid much attention to researchers and practitioners. Matching race/ethnicity of caseworker (Perry & Limb, 2004; Font et al., 2012) and professionalism (Cabral & Smith, 2011) have been regarded as one of the main efforts in responding to the racial/ethnic diversity of clients. However, mixed understanding of the relationship between racial/ethnic matching, professionalism and client outcomes exists. Also, engagement and stress of caseworkers have rarely been studied in these contexts. As such, this study aims to demonstrate the role of worker–level factors associated with the racial/ethnic diversity of caregivers as clients – with particular attention paid to racial/ethnic matching of caseworker–caregiver dyads and professionalism –in client satisfaction and the moderating role of engagement and stress in the relationship between the worker–level factors and caregiver satisfaction.
Methods
Wave two of the nationally representative data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Wellbeing(NSCAW) II was utilized. 702 caregivers who were directly linked to the caseworkers in the data were included in analysis. Caregiver satisfaction with caseworker services was measured in three aspects; 1) empathy, 2) service process 3) service provision. As independent variables, racial/ethnic matching and professionalism (graduate degree and social work degree) were included in the analysis. Caseworkers’ engagement and stress were used as moderators. Gender matching of worker-client dyads, child age in years and caseworkers’ working tenured were controlled. This study accounted for sampling weights for all analyses considering the sampling design of the NSCAW. The moderating variables were mean-centered to avoid multicollinearity and weighted two-step hierarchical OLS regressions were conducted using STATA 12.0.
Findings
The three dimensions of caregiver satisfaction had distinctive predictors. First, a higher level of stress and gender matching was related to a decrease in satisfaction with empathy and service process. Engagement was a moderator of the relationship between racial/ethnic matching, and satisfaction with empathy and service process. Regarding service provision satisfaction, racial/ethnic non-matching was associated with satisfaction. The three racial/ethnic groups of caregivers showed their distinctive predictors of satisfaction with caseworker services. Altogether, partial interaction effects of racial/ethnic matching, professionalism, engagement, and stress on caregiver satisfaction were found.
Conclusions and Implications
The findings demonstrated the role of caseworker–level factors in caregiver satisfaction, and have implications for managers and researchers. The findings indicate that racial/ethnic matching and professionalism were not critical to increasing caregiver satisfaction. However, the findings highlight the moderating role of engagement and stress in the relationships between racial/ethnic matching, professionalism and caregiver satisfaction. Therefore, managers need to take into consideration creating more engaged and less stressful working environments with implementing racial/ethnic matching and promoting caseworkers’ professional knowledge. For future research, there is a need to consider the nested structure of the child welfare system, thus allowing researchers to examine the clustering effects of caseworker factors on client satisfaction.