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Legislation Promotes Strengthening the Human Services Workforce.

Recently introduced legislation in the U.S. House and Senate focuses on the need to support and strengthen workers in the child welfare, early childhood, afterschool and other workforces.

University Program Helps Students Choose Public Service Jobs

October 2007 This year, Tufts University launched a loan forgiveness program designed to aid graduates and alumni who work in the nonprofit sector, and attract new students and graduates to this arena. The newspaper article and editorial, both from the Boston Globe, provide additional information about the program.

The Organizational Effectiveness Institute: Building the 21st Century Workforce

August 2007 The American Public Human Services Association created and implemented a multi-session Workforce Development Institute designed to assist agencies in putting promising workforce approaches into practice. This report describes the lessons learned during the process of engaging and training human services administrators in effecting change in the workforce functions of their organizations.

Congress Hears About the Workforce Crisis

On May 15, 2007, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support convened a hearing designed to explore the challenges that child welfare agencies face in serving the vulnerable children and families in their care. Witnesses providing testimony included the First Lady of Virginia, GAO and state child welfare agency administrators, consultants and foundation directors.

In their testimony, the witnesses identified the critical issues and challenges facing child welfare agencies. Excerpts that emphasize the importance of focusing on workforce issues appear below:

William Bell, President and CEO, Casey Family Programs: “The GAO Report produced in October 2006 at the request of the Subcommittee identified three of the most important challenges state child welfare agencies need to address in order to improve outcomes for children and families as: 1.) Providing an adequate level of services for children and families, 2.) Recruiting and retaining caseworkers, and 3.) Finding appropriate homes for children

We respectfully submit that there are seven specific challenge areas that must receive focused attention and resource investments in the near term to achieve the long term positive results we all desire and that children deserve:

(These include) Caseload Size: It is a documented fact that dangerously high caseloads severely hinder caseworkers’ ability to focus on the health and well being of children in our care.

Given the high amount of time a caseworker and/or social worker has to spend with administrative duties, travel, court appearances and providing quality service to children and families, we need to implement a reasonable caseload size standard or ceiling for all child welfare caseworkers/social workers in this country.

Leadership Development: In order to implement and sustain positive change, competent executive and mid-level leadership must be in place. Those in strategic positions must not only have a vision, but have the proven experience, resources and authority to execute that vision.

Frontline Supervision: One of the critical and necessary elements of child welfare reform is investing in the frontline workforce to improve the quality of the supervision provided to frontline staff. Individual workers need proper training, relevant education, and sufficient supervisory support to make competent, experienced decisions about the needs of children.

Mary Nelson, Administrator, Division of Child and Family Services, Iowa Dept of Human Services: The issue of an adequate workforce of frontline child welfare caseworkers is one of the most significant challenges we face in Iowa in terms of meeting the requirement for monthly visits…

Iowa has also struggled with having an adequate number of trained supervisors. As noted, frontline supervisors play an essential role as expert consultants to our frontline staff as they make the critical decisions expected of them. We have been fortunate to receive two federal grants focused on recruiting, training and retaining child welfare supervisors. As a result, we have been able to strengthen the skills of our supervisors as coaches and mentors. We've also been fortunate to receive funding from our state Legislature to hire additional supervisors.

Despite the progress we’ve made to date, we do not currently have the staff complement to reach 100% of the children we serve. New flexibility in the use of federal funds to support these frontline staff – caseworkers and supervisors – would help us to continue to make progress to reach this goal.

Cornelia Ashby, Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security, U.S. Government Accountability Office: Child welfare officials…reported having trouble recruiting and retaining caseworkers because many caseworkers are overwhelmed by large caseloads. According to the Child Welfare League of America, some child welfare programs lack caseload standards that reflect time needed to investigate allegations of child maltreatment, visit children and families, and perform administrative responsibilities. CWLA set caseload standards of no more than 12 cases per caseworker investigating allegations of child maltreatment, and no more than 15 cases for caseworkers responsible for children in foster care. However, according to CWLA, in most states, average caseloads in some areas are often more than double the CWLA standards.

State child welfare officials we interviewed also reported that increasing amounts of time spent on administrative duties made it difficult to recruit and retain staff and limited the amount of time caseworkers could spend visiting families. For example, child welfare officials in three states we visited estimated that some caseworkers spent a significant amount of time on administrative duties such as entering case data in automated systems, completing forms, and providing informational reports to other agencies. This administrative burden has limited caseworker ability to ensure timely investigations of child maltreatment and to make related decisions concerning the removal of children from their homes, according to officials, and influenced caseworker decisions to seek other types of employment.

To view the testimony as a whole, visit: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp

Archived News Listings:

State Groups Confront the Workforce Challenge

Two reports recently issued by organizations in both North Carolina and Massachusetts focus on workforce challenges and potential solutions in these states.

In North Carolina, UNC Chapel Hill’s recruitment and retention project is focusing on action steps that frontline staff, supervisors, administrators and agency directors can take to address workforce issues. The January 2007 issue of Children’s Service Practice Notes, issued by the North Carolina Division of Social Services and the Family and Children’s Resource Program focuses on issues being faced by the child welfare workforce and strategies that can be used to address these issues.

In Massachusetts, the state’s Council of Human Service Providers commissioned two reports that focus on examining the state’s workforce challenges. Help Wanted: The Future of the Human Services Workforce in Massachusetts was released in April 2006, and Help Wanted 2: Recruiting and Retaining the Next Generation of Human Services Workers in Massachusetts was issued a year later, in April 2007. In the state, there are more than 100,000 workers in the human services workforce, and these employees serve more than one in ten of the state’s residents.

Legal Momentum convenes national early childhood education and child care leaders to strategize about workforce issues.

In January 2007, Legal Momentum convened a national strategy session on early education and child care workforce development at UC Berkeley. Hosted by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, the meeting brought together 50 leaders in the early childhood education and child care fields to develop strategies to address workforce development issues. Of particular focus were: competencies and credentialing, compensation, and professional development of workers in these fields, and public education and messaging around the importance of these workers and the role they play in the well-being, development and education of young children.

National Afterschool Association meeting features findings of recent workforce studies, uses research to drive development of local action agenda.

In March 2007, the National Afterschool Association convened its annual conference in Phoenix. At the meeting, Cornerstones for Kids supported a featured session, entitled “Professional Workforce Development: An Action Agenda.” The session summarized key findings from recent workforce studies, and used this research as the starting point for a discussion focused on the development of a local action agenda. The NAA meeting was attended by more than 3,000 afterschool practitioners, advocates and others.

American Public Human Services Association holds series of workforce institutes dedicated to addressing key issues, challenges facing the human services workforce.

APHSA convened a series of three Workforce Institutes in 2006, in the months between June and December. Participants representing eight states and localities conducted thorough assessments of their workforce issues and developing comprehensive strategies for addressing barriers to a more effective workforce. APHSA will convene a meeting in June 2007 and then issue a report that will focus on the factors that need to be in place to be more strategic about workforce improvements and the key accomplishments of participating states.

Cornerstones for Kids convenes meeting of federal recruitment and retention grantees to learn about promising strategies to address workforce improvements in the child welfare field.

In October 2006, Cornerstones for Kids organized a one-day meeting in Baltimore, Maryland of eight child welfare organizations that have received federally funded grants from the Children’s Bureau to develop models of effective staff recruitment and retention training. Grants were provided to university-based organizations in six states including Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New York and North Carolina, all of whom attended the meeting. Arizona and Connecticut, which are also benefiting from the work of the grantees, were also represented. Each grantee is in the fourth year of five year grants, and, at the meeting each shared lessons learned as they develop, test and implement workforce improvements in their states.

Youth Today issue dedicated to youth workforce issues

The March 2007 issue of Youth Today included extensive coverage of national youth workforce issues. This included “Portrait of the American youth worker,” by Patrick Boyle which summarized the results of the Next Generation Youth Work Coalition survey of youth workers across the nation, “Youth Work Snapshots,” by John Kelly of youth workers and the jobs they perform across the U.S. and a look at the federal budget and its decreasing expenditures on youth programs, “Federal budget freezes youth programs,” by Erika Fitzpatrick.

Visit the Workforce Planning Portal

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