Session: Worker Characteristics and Their Effects on Implementation and Child Welfare Outcomes: Lessons Learned, Insights, and Implications (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Increasingly, research evidence suggests that characteristics of child welfare staff are associated with the decisions they make on cases, whether it's to refer a family for an intervention, substantiate a maltreatment report, or place a child in out-of-home care. Further, implementation research clearly points to addressing staff characteristics and attitudes as key to successful implementation of evidence-based practice. Still, there is much to be learned about what characteristics matter, to what degree, and for which decisions. This symposium will present results from three separate studies that employed a General Staff Survey (GSS) in different jurisdictions concerned about understanding the extent to which caseworkers' beliefs, behaviors, and the organizational culture and climate affect the implementation and outcomes of three distinct interventions. Each study linked GSS data to process or administrative data reflecting the actual decisions of the participating casework staff. By using the Decision-Making Ecology as a theoretical framework, and in examining common scales, these three new studies consider the relative contributions of case-, worker-, and agency-level factors on the decision to offer an intervention or place a child in out-of-home care. A moderator/facilitator will introduce the topic including key themes and questions to contemplate throughout the presentations. Presenter 1 will present and discuss results from a study conducted in a large southern state examining associations between staff and agency characteristics and whether and to what degree a worker complied with making mandated referrals for families randomly assigned to receive a family group conference. Presenter 2 will share results of the GSS survey that was administered to a state-wide population of Child Protective Services caseworkers and linked to the caseworkers' removal decisions using administrative data. Presenter 3 will share results of two rounds of a GSS conducted in a large southeastern state that were linked to administrative data reflecting investigation and assessment decisions, including placing a child in out-of-home care.

The results for each study are compelling and common or disparate themes in the findings across the three studies will be presented as a back drop to an intentional discussion about methodological and substantive lessons learned. Further, the discussion will extend insights about the importance of child welfare staff characteristics (e.g., attitudes about the role of child welfare, concerns about liability, tenure with the agency) and their association with practices to explore an array of implications for child welfare evaluations, researchers, agency administrators, human resource staff, trainers, and policy makers. The discussion will be tailored to promote critical thinking about equity and justice in the light of disparate practice, how this research can serve needs at multiple levels in an agency, and to contemplate implications for the design of the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information Systems (CCWIS), hiring, training, assigning staff to specialty units, supervision, and continuous quality improvement (CQI). This research extends what we know about the relevance and importance of ecological factors to interpreting intervention and agency outcomes and fosters greater clarity in the interpretation of intervention successes or failures as well as agency outcomes.