"Working on It Together, Collaboratively": Child Welfare Supervisors' Perspectives on Acceptability, Feasibility, and Fidelity with Implementing a Strengths-Based Coaching Program

Background and Purpose: Workforce stability and well-being continues to be suggested as paramount to child welfare system’s ability to effectively serve children and families. The quality of supervision in child welfare has been associated with a host of workforce well-being outcomes, including turnover and retention (Bride, 2007). Further, implementation literature has identified coaching as a critically important strategy for supporting innovation’s successful and complete use. Yet, few studies have examined interventions that equip supervisors with coaching skills towards staff growth and competencies in family-centered practice. Using the Conceptual Framework for Implementation Outcomes (CFIO; Proctor et al., 2011), this study investigated three implementation outcomes of a strengths-based coaching program provided to child welfare supervisors. Specifically, we asked three research questions: (1) How acceptable was the coaching model among child welfare supervisors? (2) How feasible was the coaching model among child welfare supervisors? (3) To what extent was the coaching model delivered with fidelity?

Method: We conducted eight focus groups and seven interviews with 35 child welfare supervisors who had participated in a coaching program across a Midwestern state. The CFIO and implementation drivers (Fixsen et al 2019) provided the conceptual foundation for the semi-structured interview guide. Focus groups and interviews were recorded and professionally transcribed. Transcripts were uploaded to Dedoose and coded for themes (Clarke and Braun, 2006) by researchers. Rigor and trustworthiness were enhanced with multiple reads, audit trail, collaborative coding/analysis, peer debriefing, and member checking.

Results: Overall, we found that acceptability was generally high, feasibility was identified as moderate, and fidelity was primarily low. Across these three implementation outcomes, participants discussed a variety of facilitators and barriers which revealed ways that the outcomes were influenced by factors at multiple levels (i.e., micro, mezzo, and macro). For example, individual factors focused on the alignment between participants’ own supervision style and the coaching model. At the organizational level, participants identified factors related to workload and staffing levels, retention/turnover, communication, and leadership. System factors were also identified and frequently included initiative alignment and fatigue.

Conclusion/Implications: Results from this study continue to build knowledge on the implementation of workforce interventions in child welfare, adding to a growing and important line of research (e.g., Turley et al, 2022). While our results indicate that the coaching model was largely acceptable to and perceived as beneficial by supervisors, issues with feasibility and fidelity were prominent for its real-world use. In fact, the identified organizational and system barriers could prevent consistent, high-quality and sustained use of the innovation. While future study is needed to examine the relationship between supervisors’ use of coaching and outcomes with staff, children, and families, this research is relevant to the implementation of many interventions in child welfare settings. Our findings amplify the importance of mezzo and macro influences in implementation and the need to inspire and enable hospitable environments for innovations’ successful implementation.