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The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD) was established in 2016 to work closely with eight public child welfare jurisdictions to address workforce challenges. These multi-year projects used a consistent approach to implementation and rigorous evaluation methods with the goals of improving worker performance, well-being, and retention.
Across the projects QIC-WD emphasized the importance of partnering with HR, and agencies partnered with QIC-WD team members with expertise in workforce, implementation, and evaluation to design, implement, and study jurisdiction-specific interventions in response to organizational needs. This message provides a high-level overview of the eight interventions and related key findings.
- The competency-based selection process tested in Oklahoma was custom designed based on input from workers and supervisors to develop an interview process that would identify candidates who possess the fundamental competencies that are needed but cannot or will not be trained on the child welfare worker job. Our study found that this new process lowered the risk of an employee leaving by 22 percent.
- The onboarding program designed for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was implemented and was found to result in better organizational socialization, which is known to be related to turnover, among those who participated in it.
- A job redesign, which involved HR and civil service representatives in addition to agency staff, was undertaken in Louisiana. This complex initiative resulted in the creation of teams focused on prevention and permanency. Each team included a newly designed professional role, the Child Welfare Team Specialist, responsible for administrative aspects of the caseworker job. We found that the teaming model improved a variety of measures related to staff well-being, case practice, and case outcomes, although it did not impact turnover.
- An organizational change process, called ARC, was implemented in Milwaukee to elevate worker voice in agency decision making, and we found positive changes in organizational culture and climate, openness to change, psychological safety, and leadership support. In addition, retention was higher among those who participated in ARC teams, compared to those who did not.
- An intervention to address job-related traumatic stress was tested in Nebraska. The intervention included Resilience Alliance (RA) enhanced with peer groups and Restoring Resiliency Response was also piloted. Although participants generally reported a positive experience with RA, the study did not find that the intervention impacted turnover.
- Counties in Ohio paired RA with coaching and supportive supervision. The study found that the intervention positively impacted participants’ coping and resilience skills among other outcomes, and significantly improved the organizational culture and climate of participating agencies. However, the intervention did not have an impact on turnover over time.
- A formal telework policy was developed and implemented in Washington (pre-COVID) to improve worker well-being. The telework study in Washington found no effects on job attitudes or turnover, although interviews with participants identified a number of perceived benefits and challenges of telework in child welfare settings.
- Case-supportive technology tools (transcription and a mobile application, COMPASS|Mobile) were implemented and tested in Virginia. The goal was to improve access to administrative information remotely. The implementation of the application was found to enhance staff beliefs that the agency cares about them, reduce stress, and improve some practice outcomes, although the intervention did not impact turnover.
The key findings from each of these studies, along with videos, information on implementation, logic models, and additional resources can be found on the QIC-WD website.
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