It's Personal and Professional: The Influence of Child Welfare Workers' Experience, Beliefs, and Attitudes on Case-Level Decisions

Background and Purpose:  For decades, researchers have postulated that case-level child welfare decisions are influenced by factors above and beyond the characteristics of the children and families reported for child maltreatment, but we still know little about how characteristics of the caseworker decision makers may influence key decisions that affect the trajectories of child welfare cases. This research expands the body of knowledge by examining the hypothesis that child, caseworker, and agency characteristics influence the likelihood of planned permanent exits from care.

Methods: In 2015, an online general staff survey was administered to 335 child welfare workers across four regions within a Southeastern state, with an overall response rate of 65 percent (n = 209).  The survey used field-tested scales measuring attitudes about child welfare work, perceptions of workload, organizational culture and climate, child welfare tenure, and questions about the extent to which their personal experiences influenced their practice. Worker characteristics data were linked at the worker level to child level administrative data reflecting case characteristics (e.g., history, age, spells in out-of-home care) if a worker had responsibility for the case during the entire spell. Dependent variables examined were the exit status for children in care at the end of the spell or study period, whichever came first.

Multivariate event history analyses were performed on 571 child level spell records for 180 unique workers using case- and worker-linked data. Factors such as where the worker fell on a spectrum of child safety vs. family preservation beliefs, the worker’s confidence in local services, perceptions of administrative leadership, tenure with the child welfare agency, and beliefs about whether their personal parenting experiences (i.e., how they were parented and their beliefs about appropriate parenting) influenced case decisions were included in the models examining the exit outcomes.

Results:  Analyses reveal that in addition to child characteristics and regional variations, characteristics of the assigned workers were associated with the risk-ratios of the outcomes.  Specifically, controlling for covariates, a strong commitment to family preservation (as opposed to child safety or more neutral views) was associated with a higher likelihood of an exit to relatives and a lower likelihood of a child remaining in care (RR = 1.90 and 0.47, respectively). Workers with a more favorable view of administrative leadership had a lower likelihood of children exiting to relatives (RR = 0.68). More agreement that personal experiences with parenting influenced their cases decisions was associated with greater likelihood of the child remaining in care (RR = 1.29). Staff with more years of experience in child welfare were associated with higher likelihood of adoptions and lower likelihood of children remaining in care (RR = 1.10 and 0.95, respectively). Staff with more confidence in local services had higher likelihood of a child being adopted (RR = 1.10).

Conclusions and Implications:  The results of this study suggest that child welfare workers’ personal attitudes and characteristics do have associations with permanency outcomes, a finding that offers insights into and has implications for workforce configuration, staff development, performance monitoring, and quality improvement.