Changing Challenges: Addressing Newly Hired Workers' Perceptions of Difficult Cases over Time

Background: Over 3 million youth received a child protective investigation or other response in 2015, with many of these cases including co-occurring problems (e.g., substance use, domestic violence, mental health issues). Literature shows that child welfare workers experience challenges in managing their caseloads (e.g., burnout); however, little research exists as to what makes particular cases challenging. The present qualitative study explores newly hired child welfare workers’ perceptions of difficult cases at two time points to answer the following research questions: Among child welfare workers, 1) what makes a case exceptionally challenging, and 2) do perceptions of exceptionally challenging cases change over time?

Methods: Researchers examined data from wave 2 (6 months employment) and wave 3 (12 months employment) of the ongoing, longitudinal Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families. Case managers and child protective investigators were recruited during their preservice training between September 2015 and December 2016. Those who completed the baseline survey (N=1,501) receive new surveys approximately every six months, even if they have left the child welfare workforce. For both waves 2 and 3, participants who reported they were currently carrying a caseload as a child welfare worker were asked about their caseload, including a short-response item asking what constitutes an exceptionally challenging case. The first author created an a priori codebook for the wave 2 data, consisting of eight overarching patterns. The first and second authors coded the same 20% of data independently before comparing codes, which resulted in slight codebook revisions. They then divided and independently coded the remaining wave 2 and wave 3 data. It is important to note that, because the authors evaluated workers’ perceptions of challenging cases over time, several additional codes were added to the original codebook to reflect the new challenges workers identified in wave three.

Results: At waves two and three, 1,034 and 836 child welfare workers, respectively, responded to the short-response item. At wave 2, cases were challenging because of agency policies and procedures (e.g., locating clients, interacting with the legal system); specific case types, attributes, and tasks (e.g., present danger, domestic violence, multiple children on a single case); and client-related issues (e.g., difficult/hostile parents and caregivers, non-compliant parents). In addition to the challenges identified in wave 2, at wave 3, workers began identifying more internal challenges (e.g., emotional impact of work, conflict between agency policy and worker opinion).

Conclusion and Implications: Within the first year of child welfare work, some aspects of challenging cases do not appear to diminish over time (e.g., hostile parents, multiple children on a single case, co-occurring domestic violence). Given that these challenges hold over time for new workers, ongoing supervisory support and mentoring should focus on increasing workers’ efficacy in addressing these challenges. As workers progress in their roles, they appear to place greater emphasis on their internal struggles with cases. Administrators should be open to worker feedback (e.g., related to policy and procedure disagreement), encourage self-care, and promote available resources (e.g., employee assistance programs).