• Factors Influencing Retention of Child Welfare Staff: A Systematic Review of Research
  This study, undertaken in collaboration by the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research and the University of Maryland School of Social Work, examined the personal and organizational conditions and strategies that impact retention. Also available at this site are three issue briefs:
  • Retaining Competent Child Welfare Workers: Lessons from Research
  • Professional Education for Child Welfare Practice: Improving Retention in Public Child Welfare Agencies
  • Understanding Retention in Child Welfare: Suggestions for Further Research and Evaluation
    
    
• Professional Development
  This issue of The Evaluation Exchange from the Harvard Family Research Project focuses on evaluating professional development across a range of fields, including after school and youth development, education, child care, and child welfare. The issue features innovative methods in professional development, conceptual frameworks and practical tools for evaluating professional development, links between professional development and program quality, and the role of organizational contexts in supporting professional development and positive outcomes.
  
  
• Improving Social Service Program, Training, and Technical Assistance Information Would Help Address Long-standing Service-Level and Workforce Challenges
  In response to a survey by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, states identified three primary challenges as most important to resolve to improve outcomes for children under their supervision: providing an adequate level of services for children and families, recruiting and retaining caseworkers, and finding appropriate homes for certain children. State officials also identified three challenges of increasing concern over the next 5 years: children's growing exposure to illegal drugs, increased demand to provide services for children with special needs, and changing demographic trends or cultural sensitivities in providing services for some groups of children in the states' child welfare systems. This report includes GAO recommendations for meeting those challenges.
  
  
• Improving the Child Welfare Workforce: Lessons Learned from Class Action Litigation
  This report describes a study of efforts to improve the child welfare workforce in the context of class action litigation in 12 states and localities across the natio. The study was conducted by Children's Rights in partnership with the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL),
  
  
• Workload Studies
  American Humane has completed workload studies in a number of jurisdictions. Access the reports from their website.
  
  
• Workforce Planning Portal
  This site from Cornerstones for Kids provides hands-on tools and resources for human services agencies looking for solutions to workforce challenges. It is a comprehensive model agencies can use to address these challenges.
  
  
• Child Welfare League of America Workforce Development Initiative
  Since 1999, the Walker Trieschman Center has led CWLA's efforts to seek solutions for the workforce shortage in the child welfare field, and currently houses the organization's Workforce Development Initiative. This initiative is guided and supported by a National Advisory Committee and is building the field's capacity to comprehensively address immediate and long-term workforce issues. These efforts have included linking all of the program areas and other CWLA initiatives that directly or indirectly involve the workforce.
  
  
• Cornerstone For Kids
  C4K was formed in 2004 to house and manage the Human Services Workforce Initiative (HSWI). The premise of HSWI is that human services can positively impact the lives of vulnerable children and families, but that we cannot produce better outcomes for these individuals without addressing the workforce charged with helping them. In partnership with key national and state organizations in the fields of child welfare, juvenile justice, child care, youth development and employment service, C4K is identifying the challenges facing this workforce, highlighting best practices, and working towards policy solutions. HSWI is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
  
  
• Promoting Child Welfare Workforce Improvements Through Federal Policy Changes
  This series of reports from Children's Defense Fund and Children's Rights, Inc. is the result of discussions among key child welfare organizations designed to examine the workforce challenges that impede efforts to meet critical child welfare outcomes, and to develop a set of federal policy recommendations to support workforce improvements.
  
  
• Workload and Workforce Issues in Child Welfare
  Fostering Results and the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research are working in partnership to promote evidence-based strategies to develop and retain a competent workforce.
  
  
• National Association of Social Workers
  This section of the NASW website focuses on research addressing the recruitment and retention of professional social workers in child welfare work. It provides research and resource information that supports the importance of professional education for child welfare practice.

Bibliographies

• Recruitment and Retention of Child Welfare Workers, 2005-2007
  Prepared for ourteleconference by the Child Welfare Information Gateway. Compiled in August 2007. For newer titles added to the Gateway database, click: http://basis.caliber.com/cwig/ws/library/docs/gateway/SearchForm
  
  
• Research Bibliography: Relations Between Workforce Development and Child Outcomes in Four Human Service Sectors
  This bibliography from the Harvard Family Research Project was compiled as part of a research review on the effects of workforce development on child outcomes in four human service sectors: child welfare, early childhood education, juvenile justice, and youth development. The review is guided by a broad model of workforce development that includes contextual factors such as workforce characteristics; individual professional development and organizational and policy supports that contribute to a high-quality workforce; and the short- and intermediate-term outcomes leading to improved outcomes for children and youth. Consequently, the articles listed below include research on various components and links in this broad model.