The Role of Future-Oriented Mindset in Addressing Well-Being in Child Welfare

Background and Purpose: There are over 428,000 children in the child welfare system in the U.S. (U.S. DHHS, 2015). The system acts as guardian for involved children, and maintains three central tenants: safety (i.e., freedom from real or threatened violence or harm), permanency (i.e., long-term residency arrangements), and well-being. The last of these aims is the least understood by practitioners, scholars or policy-makers (Wilson, 2014). Research has described associations between individual and familial factors and youth outcomes associated with well-being (e.g. Drapeau, 2007; Andersson, 2005); however, there is limited research examining the definition, parameters, or meaning of well-being. This lack of clarity makes well-being difficult to assess, promote, or protect. This study was conducted to gather insights into well-being from child welfare professionals. Our paper addresses the abovementioned gap by focusing on the temporal and specifically future-oriented nature of participant’s definitions of well-being.

Methods: We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 28 child welfare professionals at various agencies in a large Midwestern city. Interviews lasting approximately 90 minutes took place at workers’ places of employment (n=25) or by phone (n=3). Participants primarily had social work degrees, and had an average of 15 years of child welfare practice experience. Interviews centered on workers’ conceptualizations of well-being, and the barriers and facilitators to well-being within their practice.  The research team worked collaboratively to build a code book and used NVivo 10 to code for themes within and across interviews. Using an iterative, interpretivist approach to data analysis (Patton, 2014), four units of meaning that represent workers’ conceptualizations of well-being emerged. One of those captured the importance of a future-oriented mindset in providing care to children not only while involved in the child welfare system, but beyond.

Results: Analysis reveals that child welfare professionals have comprehensive, complex working definitions of well-being that inform, guide, and challenge their practice. A key component of well-being is the maintenance of a shared mindset oriented toward the child's future, shared by child welfare workers, caregivers and the youth themselves. Specifically, youth well-being was defined by and dependent upon: maintaining hope for and with the child; focusing on youth achieving their full potential; and cultivating their individual interests and talents. Well-being was understood as intervening with an eye beyond crisis management and short-term goals, as well-being requires preparing youth for life into adulthood. This includes helping youth healing from trauma, developing psychosocial skills, and accessing high quality resources.

Conclusion and Implications: Practice-informed understandings of well-being for children and families in child welfare include attention to promoting present conditions that encourage a dynamic, productive, and pro-social future for the youth after leaving care. Future research should explore how a hopeful, future-oriented mindset can contribute to overcoming barriers and achieving adult well-being outcomes, such as psychological self-sufficiency (Hong & Choi, 2013). Improvement in understanding of facilitators to well-being, including prioritizing a future-oriented mindset in caring for system-involved youth, can help us to better articulate, imagine, and achieve the well-being dimensions of our work which are, by definition, developmental and long term.