Organizational Innovation in Child Welfare Systems Social Work Education Consortium in Partnership with New York State Office of Children and Family Services Presenters Paul Brady, Commissioner Mary McCarthy, Ph.D., LMSW Recruitment and Retention of a Qualified Workforce Teleconference December 4, 2008

New York’s Turnover Problem  New York is State Supervised, County Administered  Tremendous variability from county to county  Highly urban counties, isolated rural counties  Until 2000, no systematic collection of turnover data

New York’s Turnover Problem Cont’d  High turnover anecdotally perceived as a universal problem  State studies showed turnover to be cyclical, localized and perhaps structural in nature

Why do caseworkers want to leave child welfare positions?  Burnout  Problems and concerns with administrative policies  Pay is too low

What changes might encourage caseworkers to stay?  Reduce caseload size  Increase pay  Create changes in administrative policies and procedures (i.e. more flexibility)  Increase amount of respect from others inside and outside of agency

Organizational Intervention Design Teams  Making the Group a Team Attend to social processes as well as focusing on the work Attend to social processes as well as focusing on the work  Specific Tasks  Use of Logic Model  Merging the Social and the Functional Action Learning and Research Action Learning and Research Data Driven Data Driven  Evaluation

 Discussion from Commissioner Brady about how the process works for a child welfare agency.

(based on 7 Schoharie County participants)

Common Themes Across Teams  Safety  Job descriptions  Respect  Vicarious trauma/secondary traumatic stress  Life-work fit  Communication  Legal issues

Design Team Lessons Learned  Model the behavior we are trying to encourage  Get to the work quickly  *Stay solution focused  Don’t get “sucked in” to the problems and negative process  Always go back to the data  *Need representation at ALL meetings by upper level management  *Management & Supervision consultations are essential *These facilitate action.