ChildStat: Leading Systems-level Improvements based on Case-level Experiences 
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that showcases the development, implementation, and outcomes of ChildStat, a creative, data-driven, systemic leadership initiative. Link to webinar is included.

Data-driven Performance Improvement 
This document discusses the findings and implications of a study that measured public and private frontline worker perceptions of evidence-informed practices (EIP), offering suggestions for utilizing EIP in child welfare agencies; providing research focused on the various types of evidence available in child welfare agencies; and discussing the extent to which this information is incorporated into daily practice.

New Jersey Fellows: Building Capacity in "Managing by Data" to Improve Leadership, Frontline Practice & Case Outcomes
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that showcases an innovative program to build capacity in “managing by data” to support emerging quality improvement efforts, using both quantitative and qualitative data - on the ground, at the front-line level, and throughout the organization. Link to webinar is included.

Using Data
This document highlights the findings of a study identifying the organizational factors that influence data use among child welfare employees in their day-to-day work and decision-making.

Workforce Demographics & Job Satisfaction
This document discusses the results and implications of a study examining the relationship between worker characteristics and job satisfaction in a geographic context utilizing reviews literature and similar, smaller-scale studies that were previously conducted.

Citizen Involvement in Child Welfare
This document summarizes the literature on citizen participation in public child welfare with special emphasis on as Foster Care Review Boards (FCRB), Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), and Citizen Review Panels (CRP); and offers strategies for using citizens to support positive change within public child welfare agencies.

How To Support Children and Families in Your Community
All of us must work together to build and sustain a climate where child welfare professionals can do their best to help children, youth, and families thrive. This infographic provides ideas for how community members can join professionals and non-professionals in supporting children and families in our communities.

Impact of Public Perceptions on Child Welfare Workers 
This document explores how societal perceptions of child welfare work relate to workers’ job satisfaction and intent to leave.

Strategic Planning
This document highlights the role of strategic planning in improving cross-sector partnerships in child welfare and identifies: 1) factors that contribute to successful partnerships; 2) effective processes for facilitating strategic planning around cross-sector partnerships; and 3) factors that promote effective planning efforts. 

Beyond Child Welfare Education & Training: Pennsylvania’s Dynamic University-Agency Partnership for Transfer of Learning, Quality Improvement; Organizational Effectiveness 
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that highlights the array of workforce development strategies implemented through this dynamic university-agency partnership in Pennsylvania. Link to webinar is included.

Cohort Effect
This article reports findings from an evaluation of a university-based child welfare training program focused on increasing the retention of knowledgeable, competent, and experienced child protective service workers. Students across three cohorts reported three critical elements were essential in their trajectory through the program and continued professional success.

Distance Education
This document summarizes assessment data on a workforce development strategy (Pathways Program) which provides accredited social work education, beginning with advising and developing an academic plan and leading to BSW or MSW degree through distance learning modalities. 

Educational Preparation
This document summarizes an article addressing the use of Title IV-E funding in both BSW and MSW programs and looks at the social work education programs that collaborate with child welfare agencies to assist in the recruitment and retention of professional child welfare staff. It provides the results of a study on 94 social work education programs in 31 states and discusses practices and trends that may lead to increased stabilization of the child welfare workforce.

Mentoring Child Welfare Staff
The paper summarizes the article “Initiating and Sustaining a Mentoring Program for Child Welfare Staff,” which describes an evaluation of a formal mentoring program in a state public child welfare agency targeting supervisors and seasoned workers.

Multi-system Education for Better Outcomes
This document summarizes an evaluation of a graduate program for child welfare, mental health, and education professionals that used a trauma-informed, resiliency-based curriculum. The program intended to deepen students’ understanding of their systems and to encourage more effective interaction and advocacy across the professions. The “glue” was the theoretical knowledge related to the key concepts while the “glitter” was a toolkit of concrete, applied, and collaborative skills.

Performance Measurement
This document summarizes findings from a collaborative initiative and qualitative study that examined the experiences of four nonprofit human service organizations engaging in performance measurement processes to satisfy accountability requirements and increase organizational and program effectiveness.

Preparing the Child Welfare Workforce: Colorado State Child Welfare Stipend Program Outcomes
This document summarizes a ten-year retrospective study of a child welfare stipend program involving four university social work programs in partnership with the Colorado Department of Human Services. The study included 245 stipend graduates and examined the program’s influence on their organizational commitment, professional identity, and intent to stay in the field.

Reducing Disparities through Indigenous Social Work Education
This paper highlights effective and inclusive education designed to address the dramatic
overrepresentation of Indigenous families in North American public child welfare systems including a pathway to "decolonizing" social work education by honoring and integrating Indigenous knowledge into social work education to support culturally responsive child welfare.

Rural & Tribal Child Welfare Education
This paper summarizes a study that explored the needs of the child welfare workforce in rural and remote areas of California, and provides possible solutions and implications for improving rural workforce development and commitment to social justice, through education. 

Simulation Labs for Child Welfare Education and Training
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that provides an overview of developing a Simulation Lab, an innovative technique being utilized with newly-hired children's services social workers in the Los Angeles area. A link to the webinar is included.

Specialized Education & Training
This document summarizes the results from a repeated measures analysis of pre- and post-training tests for newly hired workers at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and indicates that participants in Title IV-E funded programs performed significantly better at both time points.

Supporting Transition to Work as a Child Welfare Retention Strategy Infographc
This infographic describes how to support graduates' transition to work as a child welfare retention strategy.

Transfer of Learning
This document summarizes an article that highlights the impact of different training methods on training transfer, including the benefits of post-training interventions.

Trauma Informed Practice with American Indian/Alaska Native Populations
This paper describes how to develop a trauma-informed lens for working with American Indian/Alaska Native individuals, families, and communities using the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Concept of Trauma.

University-agency Partnerships
This is a 1-page summary of an article which provides four general strategies necessary for building and maintaining effective university-community social work collaborations.

Evidence-based Practice Implementation Model
This paper summarizes a four-phase implementation process model, highlights the important variables, challenges, and opportunities of each phase (Exploration, Adoption/Preparation, Implementation, & Sustainment), considers inner and outer contexts, and discusses implications for further research.

Evidence-based Practice Implementation
This 1-page summary provides an overview of the three core components of organizational readiness for evidence-based practices identified in the literature: a) motivation, b) general capacity, and c) intervention-specific capacity and highlights the basics for readiness using the R=MC² heuristic (Readiness = Motivation x General Capacity and Intervention-Specific Capacity).

Evidence-based Practices in Child Welfare: Opportunities & Challenges for the Workforce
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that provides an in-depth overview of evidence-based practices (EBP) in child welfare. Link to webinar is included.

Implementing Evidence-based interventions
This document summarizes a case study that describes challenges and solutions in implementing and evaluating an evidence-based mental health intervention for foster care youth in school settings.

Organizational Readiness
This paper provides a summary of a 7-factor model that reflects the items that most contribute to organizational readiness for trauma-informed evidence-based practices (EBPs).

Addressing Racial Disparity in Foster Care Placement
This document summarizes a case study that identified aspects of child welfare practices that contributed to a decrease in the number and disproportionality of African American/Black children in foster care in two New York counties.

Advancing Inclusivity by Caucusing
This document summarizes experiences successfully implementing racial identity-based caucusing in an MSW program social justice class at a large public university. Students asked to engage in racial identity-based caucusing due to friction in the classroom related to differential experiences and a lack of understanding of racism and white privilege.

Biases
This document describes the biases that can create barriers to organizational change and gives pointed recommendations for confronting and changing institutionalized racism and biases in the organization.

Building a Culturally Responsive Workforce: The Texas Model for Undoing Disproportionality & Disparities in Child Welfare 
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that highlights a collection of strategies for building a culturally responsive workforce based upon the Texas Model for Addressing Disproportionality & Disparities. Link to webinar is included.

Cultural Responsiveness 
This document summarizes an article that discusses the initiative "The Diversity Scorecard" being implemented in higher education to address closing the achievement gap for students who have been historically underrepresented. 

Diversity in Leadership
This paper shares findings from two studies that examined the influence of racial similarity/dissimilarity on supervisor and subordinate relationships and the influence of a supervisor’s race on employee performance.

Microaggressions 
This document summarizes an article that evaluates microaggressions and proposes possible approaches to handling situations in which microaggressions occur. The authors delve into real-life experiences that they endured from the unique perspective of three different roles: witness, perpetrator, and target.

Microaggressions in the Child Welfare Workplace
This resource summarizes the qualitative responses on the topic of microaggressions in the workplace from 30 social workers who identified as people of color. The authors asked about staff interactions with clients, focusing on policies, practices, and beliefs.

Promoting Racial Equity Through Workforce and Organizational Actions
This infographic visually describes what racial equity is in child welfare, why we need to take action, and provides suggestions on how to get started.

Racial Equity Training
This document summarizes a study that examines participant knowledge and attitudes about race, engagement in racial equity work, and organizational progress on racial equity following participation in Undoing RacismTM Workshops.

Racism as Trauma
This document examines results from a study exploring the experiences of 13 Indigenous child protection practitioners in Queensland, Australia, working in the statutory child protection system and focuses on participants’ experiences of racism as a potential source of traumatic stress.

Emotional Intelligence for Leaders
This paper summarizes the chapter, “On Leadership” by D. Goleman which describes that while intellect, big picture thinking, and long-term vision are important for leadership, the number one skill that made a leader shine was emotional intelligence. 

The Views of Many: 360 feedback for child welfare leadership development
This document summarizes a study that evaluated a 360 feedback and assessment process for child welfare leaders who participated in the NCWWI Leadership Academy for Middle Managers.

Leadership and Inclusion
This document explores the role of authentic leadership in enhancing perceptions of inclusion and also examines two outcomes potentially related to inclusion: organizational citizenship behavior and organization-based self-esteem.

Learning & Living the NCWWI Leadership Model
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that provides an in-depth exploration of the NCWWI’s Leadership Model for child welfare. Link to webinar is included.

Organizational Leadership
This paper summarizes the results of a national study focusing on leader behavior and job satisfaction of BSW and MSW social workers employed in social service agencies.

ChildStat: Leading Systems-level Improvements based on Case-level Experiences
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that showcases the development, implementation, and outcomes of ChildStat, a creative, data-driven, systemic leadership initiative. Link to webinar is included.

Coaching to Support Solution-based Casework in Child Welfare
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that highlights the core elements of a solution-based casework coaching model necessary to support meaningful change on the frontlines and throughout the agency. Link to webinar is included.

Design Teams & Learning Circles: Agency- & Unit-level Interventions for Improving Organizational Climate & Culture
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that shares two innovative methods supported by the Western Workforce Project sites in Denver, CO and Casper, WY to tackle change while improving organizational culture and climate. Link to webinar is included. Link to webinar is included. 

Direct Practice Contact: Predicting frontline workers' time with clients
This document summarizes a study that examined worker, client, agency, and societal factors that predict the time frontline child welfare workers spend in direct client contact. Understanding these dynamics can help child welfare leaders support the frontline workforce in increasing direct contact time with the vulnerable children and families being served.

A Holistic Framework for Child Welfare Worker Well-Being
This document describes a holistic child welfare worker well-being framework, identifies the three key dimensions that make up worker well-being and how leaders within
child welfare organizations can strategically and comprehensively support these dimensions.

Inclusive Organizations
This document summarizes contemporary research across the social sciences to provide evidence-based recommendations for leveraging diversity and the individual-level (employees or managers) and the organizational-level strategies for enhancing inclusion and managing diversity in the workplace

Learning Organizations
This paper summarizes an analysis that describes the nature of a learning organization, defines the boundaries of evidence-informed practice, identifies the elements of knowledge management, and specifies the elements of the transfer of learning.

Moral Distress
This summary describes the findings of a study that examined moral distress experiences among 1,879 public child welfare caseworkers and how internal and external constraints contribute to experiences of moral distress.

Organizational Climate Interventions
This paper summarizes two research studies provide information regarding the impact of two targeted organizational interventions on caseworker turnover and child welfare agency climate and culture. 

Organizational Culture
This paper summarizes two research studies that address the impact of individual, supervisory, and organizational factors on organizational culture and caseworker retention.

Organizational Environment
This document summarizes a journal article that examines the direct and indirect effects of climate and culture on outcomes for youth in a national sample of 2,380 youth in 73 child welfare systems who participated in the 2nd National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW-II).

Organizational Social Context
This paper summarizes a study which finds that organizational climates characterized by low rigidity, and high engagement and functionality are associated with the most positive work attitudes; and caseworkers in the best organizational culture and climate profiles report higher levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Organizational Support and Turnover Intention
This paper summarizes an article exploring the relationship between supervisor and caseworker) and perceived organizational support (POS, or the relationship between caseworker and organization) to help mediate role stress and turnover intention to leave among child welfare staff.

Resilience After Violence
This document summarizes an article that reviews the prevalence of workplace violence in child welfare, describes prevention strategies, suggests a framework for responding to violence, and applies the framework to an event that occurred in a publicchild welfare workplace.

Status Symbols and Employee Attitudes 
This paper summarizes a study hypothesizing that the physical setting of a workplace is a motivating force because it reflects status within an agency, which can affect employees’ work-related attitudes, including employee job satisfaction and perceived performance. Results indicated that satisfaction with status symbols in the workplace influenced job satisfaction and perceived performance, even after controlling for traditional motivational variables such as satisfaction with pay and supervisory support.

Decision-making in Child Protection 
This paper summarizes a study focused on the second cohort of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being that explores how certain factors (agency and geographic context, caseworker attributes, and families’ unique circumstances) might be associated with two key case decisions — substantiation of maltreatment, and removal and placement in out-of-home care. 

Meaningful Family Involvement
This document summarizes the article “New Roles for Families in Child Welfare” which examines the strategies and approaches child welfare agencies used to integrate meaningful family involvement into their service delivery systems and illustrates the importance of developing the capacity of child welfare agency staff and family members before fully implementing family involvement programs.

Technology Supports Practice Improvements
This document describes how technology supported the uptake of practice improvements related to trauma-informed care in child welfare in three states. More effective trauma-informed care promotes child safety, permanency, and well-being.

Using Smart Phones as Practice Support
The summary describes how a smartphone app helped reinforce content from a training program for resource caregivers* on the use of trauma-informed parenting strategies.

What Child Welfare Workers Need in a Pandemic [Infographic]
This infographic summarizes a Workforce Needs Assessment conducted with four public child welfare agencies during COVID-19 and provides three areas of need identified by the workforce.

Competency-based Recruitment, Screening & Selection: Strengthening Workforce Capacity, Retention & Organizational Resiliency 
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that highlights multiple strategies and interventions to enhance an agency’s capacity to recruit, select, and retain a qualified workforce. Link to webinar is included

Realistic Job Previews
This document summarizes the development, utilization and effectiveness of Realistic Job Previews (RJPs) on the recruitment, selection, and retention of child welfare workers, based upon a review of 10 RJPs, interviews with human resources personnel and others, and outcome data related to one state’s RJP.

Recruitment & Retention
This document summarizes a national qualitative study that explores recruitment and retention strategies within state child welfare agencies and the perceived effectiveness of these strategies examines utilized and underutilized strategies that have been employed to help alleviate child welfare recruitment and retention challenges, and identifies six recruitment and retention strategies and methods of employing each strategy.

Selection 
This document summarizes the development and initial implementation of a new employee selection protocol (ESP) for child welfare grounded in the results of recent large-scale employee retention studies and a set of research-based, minimally essential knowledge, skills, abilities, and values.

Casework Teaming to Manage Workload, Enhance Effectiveness and Boost Morale
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar on casework teaming designed reduce caseworker isolation and workload; improve workforce retention; and strengthen casework decision making and service delivery to children, youth and families. Link to webinar is included.

Commitment in Public Child Welfare
This document summarizes three journal articles that highlight findings of research exploring influences on recruitment and retention of public and private child welfare employees and the effect of worker commitment to their agency and the field. The studies offer suggestions of innovative methods to improve workforce retention.

Internal and External Job Resources
This document summarizes a study that used the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) Model with 1,917 caseworkers from three states to analyze the relationship between burnout and job demands and external and internal resources

Peer Support and Workforce Retention
This article explores how different types of peer support are associated with staff retention. The study is based on data from 1,703 child welfare workers employed in one county and two statewide agencies across the country.

Preventing Early Departures Among the Child Welfare Workforce
Early caseworker departures can have far-reaching consequences for agencies, leaving families feeling uncertain and wasting hiring and training resources. This study looked at workers who departed within six months of hire and those who continued with their employment. Significant factors for early departures included worker characteristics and organizational factors.

Resilience and Burnout
This document summarizes a journal article that highlights retention and turnover issues in child welfare through a comprehensive literature review of 65 articles focusing on research addressing individual and organizational factors related to burnout and resilience in the child welfare workforce.

Respect & Worker Retention
This document summarizes how perceptions of respect impact child welfare workers’ attitudes toward their jobs and results show workers who perceived greater respect at their jobs were less likely to think about leaving, as were older workers, while workers with a social work degree (Bachelor’s or Master’s) were 60% more likely to intend to leave.

Retention
This document highlights findings of a ten-year study examining the personal and organizational factors that impact length of employment and retention of child welfare caseworkers, and offers workplace interventions and strategies to move toward achieving a more stable workforce.

Supporting Transition to Work as a Child Welfare Retention Strategy Infographc
This infographic describes how to support graduates' transition to work as a child welfare retention strategy.

Turnover Intention Predictors 
This paper summarizes the existing literature on turnover intentions of public child welfare caseworkers in the United States. Turnover intention was reflected by various measures of either intention to leave or intention to remain employed. Twenty-two studies were included in the final analyses involving the assessment of the effect sizes for 36 predictors, classified into demographic, work-related, work environment, and attitudes/perceptions categories.

Improving Supervision by Collaboration, Transparency & Accountability: The Impact of Missouri's Supervision Advisory Committee
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that highlights action steps and strategies taken to organize, develop and sustain the Supervision Advisory Committee (SAC), which uses a participatory design process to support effective supervision of frontline child welfare staff. Link to webinar is included.

Moderating Abusive Supervision
This document summarizes a study that explored factors related to teaming to see if they buffered the negative consequences of abusive supervision.

Supervision Meta-analysis
This resource provides a meta-analysis of research articles regarding the impact of supervision on worker outcomes.

Supervision
This 1-page summary outlines the results of a small, qualitative study aimed at determining supervisory effectiveness within a state child welfare system.

Supportive Supervision
This is a 1-page summary of an article that describes the collaborative process used to develop a strengths-based supervision training model to improve child welfare practice; and explores the development process, the training curriculum, and discusses implications gleaned from training evaluations.

Effective Training for Trauma Informed Care
This study explores how the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, in partnership with Vanderbilt University, improved its trauma-informed approach by creating the Child Protective Services Academy. The CPS Academy’s training structure, development, and design are included.

Implications of Mindfulness-Informed Interventions for Trauma-Focused Practice
This document summarizes a study of mindfulness training sessions for parents which showed how integrating mindfulness interventions that target stress and coping can improve family functioning.

Secondary Traumatic Stress
This paper summarizes the literature on Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) in the child welfare workforce, identifying common sources and symptoms of STS and suggestions for workers and agencies to help prevent and address it.

Trauma Informed Practice with American Indian/Alaska Native Populations
This paper describes how to develop a trauma-informed lens for working with American Indian/Alaska Native individuals, families, and communities using the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Concept of Trauma.

Understanding Trauma-Informed Practice
This document describes how one child welfare program used an extensive case review process to assess how trauma manifests in youth involved in the child welfare system and to understand caseworker efforts to engage with youth. The program was able to use this information to make recommendations on improving trauma-informed practices.

Defining Active Efforts in the Indian Child Welfare Act
This 1-pager defines and explains active efforts according to the 2016 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) final rule. Information includes examples of how active efforts are different from reasonable/passive efforts and how child welfare programs can ensure active efforts are followed.

Reducing Disparities through Indigenous Social Work Education
This paper highlights effective and inclusive education designed to address the dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous families in North American public child welfare systems including a pathway to "decolonizing" social work education by honoring and integrating Indigenous knowledge into social work education to support culturally responsive child welfare.

Rural & Tribal Child Welfare Education
This paper summarizes a study that explored the needs of the child welfare workforce in rural and remote areas of California, and provides possible solutions and implications for improving rural workforce development and commitment to social justice, through education. 

Trauma Informed Practice with American Indian/Alaska Native Populations
This paper describes how to develop a trauma-informed lens for working with American Indian/Alaska Native individuals, families, and communities using the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Concept of Trauma.

Casework Teaming to Manage Workload, Enhance Effectiveness and Boost Morale
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar on casework teaming designed reduce caseworker isolation and workload; improve workforce retention; and strengthen casework decision making and service delivery to children, youth and families. Link to webinar is included.

Child Welfare Staff Engagement & Retention in Washington DC: Alternative Work Schedules, Telecommuting & Other Supports
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar that highlights the Washington, DC Alternative Work Schedule program. Link to webinar is included. 

Resilience After Violence
This document summarizes an article that reviews the prevalence of workplace violence in child welfare, describes prevention strategies, suggests a framework for responding to violence, and applies the framework to an event that occurred in a public child welfare workplace.

Secondary Traumatic Stress
This paper summarizes the literature on Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) in the child welfare workforce, identifying common sources and symptoms of STS and suggestions for workers and agencies to help prevent and address it.

Trust and Engagement
This document examines the association of an organization’s diversity practices with employee engagement and explores whether a trusting climate will provide a mechanism through which diversity practices can increase employees’ sense of engagement at work.

Worker Resilience 
This document summarizes an article that weaves together quantitative and qualitative research to explore how social workers build and maintain resilience in an emotionally and mentally taxing field.

Caseload/Workload Studies 
This paper summarizes the three research briefs which provides information summarizing recent studies and reports that underscore the importance of manageable caseloads and workloads for child welfare professionals.

Casework Teaming to Manage Workload, Enhance Effectiveness and Boost Morale 
This document summarizes a NCWWI webinar on casework teaming designed reduce caseworker isolation and workload; improve workforce retention; and strengthen casework decision making and service delivery to children, youth and families. Link to webinar is included.

Effective Workload Management
This document summarizes a study that surveyed 1,263 workers in a Midwestern state to determine factors that influence workload perceptions related to manageability and overtime work. Caseload characteristics, supervisor support, and regional staffing needs were examined.