Associations between Worker Characteristics and Child Welfare Case Trajectories: What Matters and When Does It Matter?

Background and Purpose. When child welfare agencies are evaluated, evaluators typically examine rates of common outcomes, such as placements or planned permanent exits. Historically, these outcomes were considered reflective of an agency’s failure or success in facilitating a family’s achievement of case goals. However, more recently, Decision Making Ecology (DME) research has indicated that factors other than child or family dynamics contribute to outcomes. Indeed, when case factors are controlled for, caseworker and organizational characteristics have important, but relatively under-studied, roles in driving decision-based outcomes. Thus, an examination of demographic, attitudinal, and organizational features was conducted in order to understand whether and how characteristics of staff and organizational context impact placement-related outcomes in a southeastern state participating in a Title IV-E Waiver initiative.

 

Methods: An online survey was administered twice across four regions to a census sample of both custodial and non-custodial workers; once in 2015 and then again in 2017. The survey employed scales measuring caseworker demographics and attitudes about family preservation, child safety, perceptions of workload, organizational culture and climate, concerns about liability and so forth. Response rates to the first and second surveys were 65% and 79% of eligible workers, respectively. Analyses of the decision to place a child in out-of-home care used survey data from 118 non-custodial workers linked to 10,568 child-CPS responses from administrative data, reflecting case characteristics of children (e.g., age, CPS response pathway, allegation) whose first contact with the system occurred between 2014 and 2016. The analysis regarding type of permanent exit from placement linked survey data from 164 workers with 3,306 spells in out-of-home care, limiting to spells that started between 2012 - 2016.

Results: Multilevel modeling and discrete time-event history analyses were employed to examine factors associated with child level trajectories ranging from placement rates to exit types from care. Cross-outcome findings indicate that in addition to regional variations and child characteristics (e.g., age, prior placements, allegation types), characteristics of assigned workers are associated with the odds of placement in out-of-home care and the likelihood of a case exiting to a specific type of permanency (e.g., kinship care, reunification, etc.). Caseworker factors (e.g., staff proclivity to family preservation over child safety beliefs) and organizational factors (e.g., perceptions of administrative leadership, supervisors, confidence in services) were associated with the odds of placement and type of exit. For example, initial assessment staff with a stronger proclivity towards family preservation than child safety were less likely to place children in out-of-home care, and children with a custodial caseworker that had a similar orientation towards family preservation were more likely to have a permanent exit from care to kin as opposed to adoption.

Conclusions and Implications:  The results of this study suggest that child welfare workers’ work environment, personal attitudes, and characteristics are associated with case decisions, but that their relative influence depends on the decision in question. This finding offers insights into and has implications for workforce interventions and implementation concerns including hiring, staff development, unit assignment, staff retention, performance monitoring, and quality improvement.