Benefits of Mentoring Programs for Child Welfare Workers: A Systematic Review

Purpose:  Research has demonstrated a need for effective child welfare workforce retention interventions.  Established retention interventions are often times discussed anecdotally, are conducted in state-silos, and are not sustainable.  Lacking evidence of effectiveness, it is difficult to gauge which of these interventions hold clout toward retaining a competent, stable workforce.  While child welfare workforce systematic reviews have been conducted broadly, providing an overview of potential retention strategies, a systematic review has not been conducted to evaluate any of these retention strategies individually.  Mentoring programs are one such intervention that has been determined to have benefits for the workforce in many different capacities, yet no formal effort has been made to systematically analyze these programs.  This systematic review evaluated the ways in which child welfare workers benefit from workforce mentoring programs.

Methods:  The systematic review included a comprehensive literature search of five academic databases, grey literature search, reference mining, and personal correspondence with experts on mentoring programs.  The study’s participants included members of the child welfare workforce employed by a public or private child welfare agency.  These workers had been in the role of mentor or protégé (mentee) and participated in a workforce mentoring program (formal or informal) intervention.  The outcome variable of the study was benefit(s) of mentoring programs.  Both authors participated in a simultaneous systematic review process to enhance reliability.        

Results: Initial systematic search results produced a total of 136 unduplicated publications.  The final sample consisted of six publications that met study inclusion criteria.  A data extraction form specifically developed for the study assisted in the extraction of sample characteristics, outcome measurements, instrument(s)/tool(s) used, psychometric properties, statistical approach, and validity/reliability elements.  Although synthesis of the data resulted in a lack of consistency across studies, results of varied statistical analysis (e.g. descriptive stats, 2-way ANOVA) demonstrated evidence that mentoring programs (both formal and informal) resulted in positive benefits to child welfare workers.  Mentoring program benefit outcomes were varied, but included comparative measures of both career and personal benefits as well as organizational benefits.  Psychometric properties were reported in two studies; however, due to a majority of the scales being researcher developed and/or modified to fit the study’s purpose, reliability and validity were not tested.            

Conclusion: This systematic review contributes to the existing child welfare workforce literature by evaluating the ways in which child welfare workers benefit from one specific retention intervention: mentoring programs.  The small amount of research that has been conducted on mentoring programs has demonstrated that there are a wide array of benefits to these programs.  These results are relevant to practitioners and administrators who are interested in retaining a competent and stable workforce through effective interventions.  Creating ways to effectively disseminate this information will allow for replication and uniformity of program operations, establishing a platform for evidence based/evidence informed child welfare workforce retention practices.