Empowering Child Welfare Workforce Pilot Project: Supporting Student Interns through Group Supervision, Tuition Sponsorship, and Stipend

Background and Purpose: In post-secondary education, many social work programs have provided additional support to students in preparation for working in CW, which may include stipends with no payback requirement (Zlotnik & Pryce, 2013). In post-secondary education, like Title IV-E programs, the focus is on academic, financial, and administrative support for students in CW field placement (Zlotnik & Pryce, 2013) usually with limited clinical support during university-agencies collaboration (Greeno et al., 2017). Our Empowering Child Welfare Workforce (ECWW) project is a university-agency collaboration that provided tuition sponsorship, stipend, and external group supervision (i.e. outside of the CW placement) to social work undergraduate interns placed in CW agencies in South Florida. For this study, we examined the effectiveness of the ECWW project on students’ outcomes of stigma, secondary traumatic stress, empowerment, self-efficacy, and intent to stay. We also examined the association between supervision components and the students’ outcomes as well as their experience with the project.

Methods: We used a mixed method design to evaluate the effectiveness of the ECWW Project on seven interns. We collected five waves of quantitative data from August 2022 to April 2023 and conducted a focus group in December 2022 and another in April 2023. We employed the percent of data exceeding the median calculator developed by Pustejovsky et al. (2023) to estimate the effect of the intervention on students’ outcomes. We used Spearman's rank correlation to examine the association between supervision components and the students’ outcomes. Finally, we used related-samples Friedman’s two-way analysis of variance and thematic analysis to examine the students’ experience with the supervision and their perception on the financial support.

Results: Results demonstrated that external group supervision was effective in improving outcomes among students. It was most effective in reducing stigma and increasing self-efficacy. On average, 70% of students’ stigma scores were lower and 63% of students’ self-efficacy scores were higher during intervention compared to baseline. Additionally, students rated their perception of four components in supervision (i.e. reflective, educational, supportive, model family-centered practice). They reported perceiving less reflective than supportive supervision in Waves 3-5, (Wave 3, Z =-2.571, p ≤ .05; Wave 4, Z = -2.714, p≤.05; and Wave 5, Z=-2.857, p≤ .01) and less reflective than model family centered practice during Waves 4 and 5, (Wave 4, Z =-2.429, p≤.05; Wave 5, Z=-2.857, p≤ .01). Additionally, the perceptions of educational supervision and modeling family-centered practice are associated with higher levels of self-efficacy. Supportive supervision is associated with less stigma towards CW-involved parents and higher level of empowerment. Overall, students reported that tuition sponsorship and stipend were helpful since they allowed for financial freedom. They reported that the project helped with career preparation, networking, and reinforcing classroom learning.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the usefulness of the ECCW project in fostering positive outcomes of students’ interning at CW agencies. Knowledge gained could inform the use of external group supervision during post-secondary education social work programs for preparing students to work in CW.