Development and Validation of the Child Welfare Provider Stigma Inventory

Purpose: Parents involved with the child welfare system are highly stigmatized by community members. However, child welfare professionals may also hold stigmatizing attitudes or behave in ways which stereotype and dismiss the parents on their caseloads. From an organizational standpoint, stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors shape workplace culture and may negatively affect worker-client relationships and parent outcomes. Child welfare provider stigma has potentially far reaching implications for the treatment (or mistreatment) of clients, attitudes about the client’s capacity for change, and the quality of service delivery to this marginalized population. Although stigmatization of child welfare-involved parents is explored in the literature, the majority of stigma reduction strategies seek to increase parent compliance and are not aimed at service providers. The Child Welfare Provider Stigma Inventory (CWPSI) addresses this gap by examining provider’s potential stigmatization of clients. The CWPSI assesses stigma on three domains: attitudes, behaviors, and coworker influence.

Methods: Ten child welfare expert panelists provided content validation. A 24-item inventory was piloted among a sample of 360 child protective investigators and case managers. Data were drawn from Wave 3 of a five-year longitudinal study of newly hired child welfare professionals, when respondents had been working for 12 months. All data were collected via Qualtrics. Missing values were replaced using multiple imputation. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s and stratified alpha. A confirmatory factor analysis verified factor structure and adjustments were made to optimize indices. Convergent and discriminant construct validity was assessed using Pearson’s correlations.

Results: Preliminary psychometrics indicated good model fit for a three-factor multidimensional scale. Content validation suggested that item content resonated with expert panelists in the field. The CWPSI was refined during reliability and validity analyses, and a 22-item final version of the scale emerged. Reliabilities were strong; Cronbach’s α for the subscales were: Attitudes=.81, Behaviors=.70, and Coworker Influence=.84. The stratified global α was .91. Factor analysis confirmed the hypothesized structure, with fit indices ranging from adequate to excellent. Evidence of construct validation endorsed hypotheses about how CWPSI scores relate to identified constructs (i.e., burnout, job satisfaction, and quality of the helping relationship).

Discussion: The final 22-item CWPSI takes ten minutes to complete and is relatively easy to score. Only two reverse items were retained; after reverse coding, scoring requires generating mean responses on each subscale. A global score is obtained by calculating the mean of all three subscale scores. Higher global scores on the CWPSI reflect a greater tendency to stigmatize child welfare-involved parents. It is suggested that all four scores be interpreted together to situate stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors within the full organizational context. Like other provider stigma measures, the CWPSI may be a valuable tool for professional training, continuing education, and workplace culture assessment. Results may help researchers or program administrators develop targeted workshops to optimize service delivery in a specific workplace setting. Additionally, the CWPSI may serve as a useful outcome measure for anti-stigma interventions or trainings conducted with child welfare professionals in the field to enhance opportunities for success among child welfare-involved parents.