Final Paper

Running head: Case Worker Turnover in Social Services1

Caseworker Turnover in Social Services

Lacey Desper

Ottawa University

12/5/14

CASE WORKER TURNOVER IN THE SOCIAL SERVICES 2

Case Worker Turnover In The Social Services

In this paper we are going to take a look at the current status of the social worker industry

with especially close look at child protective services; looking to see the effect of low paying

salaries, excessive hours. Seeing, how this creates high turnover. This in turn causes case overlap

unknowledgeable social workers and children’s needs that are overlooked. We start with an

example, viewing the issue from a child’s eyes.

“When you keep losing caseworkers, it affects your ability to tell who you can

and can’t trust. I should be able to trust my caseworker, but I can’t. How am I

supposed to tell who I can and can’t trust when I am out on my own? For

instance, people tell me to trust my caseworker who is supposed to be

trustworthy, but then they screw me by leaving. The same people tell me not to

trust my homies, yet they got my back no matter what.” (Strolin-Goltzman, J.,

Kollar, S., & Trinkle, J. 2010)

The Current State of Affairs

While, the above statement speaks to just one instance of a child being affected by

caseworker turnover, let’s take a moment to look at the issue at hand. Looking, first at a specific

instance we go to Texas. In the 2012 Texas state budget audit for personnel lose in government

jobs the senate committee brought up an issue that was alarming to them. According, to the audit

report 1,704 social workers were hired into Child Protective Services (CPS) in the state in 2012.

It was found that up to 34.3% of all of the new hires vacated the positions within that year. (Keel,

J 2013) This is just looking at new hires and not at seasoned or agents who have been with CPS

any other duration of time. This means of the 1,704 of the people hired 580 of them quit within

the year or moved to other positions. Can you imagine the affect this has on an agency’s budget?


According to the United States Department of Health and Human Service, “turnover of

frontline workers, as well as supervisory and management staff, is a major concern in many child

welfare agencies. In some jurisdictions, worker turnover is as high as 90 percent per year.” The

big reason for alarm here is that according to the US Child Welfare League of America two years

is the required amount of time in the position of a Child Protective Service Agent to have the

adequate on job knowledge to be capable of doing the job proficiently. It should be stated that

nationwide the average length of employment in CPS is less than two years in fact up to about

60% of CPS hires do not make it to two years.

Why is Caseworker Turnover So High?

While, there are many reasons for high turnover I found one article summed up all of the

issues extremely well. The article was titled, Causes and Effects of Child Welfare Workforce

Turnover: Current State of Knowledge and Future Decisions. While, I am not going to post the

article word for word it lays out a solid case for why the turnover rate is so high. It sets three

preliminary categories individual factors, supervisory factors, and organizational factors.

Listing individual factors as follows, burnout, demographics, professional commitment

and social work education. Burnout is generally the most stated reason for termination of the

role of a CPS worker. According, to The Child Welfare League of America the optimal

caseworker load is 15 clients or families. (Belmont 2011) It should be noted that a CPS worker

with this meager a caseload is almost unheard of. It has been reported that some more

expierenced caseworkers hold as much as 100 cases. In fact, the average caseload for most CPS

workers sites around 40 to 60 cases per agent. Mind you, that one case could have up to three or


even four children, and they might not all be in the same home. As well as physical exhaustion it

is also noted that emotional exhaustion occurs.

Demographics are explained as the age, gender and ethnicity of the caseworker. There

appears to be higher rates of turnover in CPS workers of an ethnicity because of excessive

emotional burnout. It was also found that young workers who landed themselves with caseloads

simply used the position to gain a better position after getting some experience under their belts.

This also speaks to the category of Professional Commitment. It also plays to the category of

education, when the workers have less experience in the field while at the same time being

overburdened; it leads to quicker burnout levels.

The next category of Supervisory Factors includes, Supportive Supervision which to sum

up extremely quickly is essentially a lack of resources or insufficient supervision. A large

majority of people who left the field cited that they chose to leave because they had no idea if

they were even doing their job correctly. They felt they had been thrown to wolves and were to

afraid of destroying children’s lives.

The last category of Organizational Factors includes job satisfaction, organizational

commitment, general organizational practices, caseload and workload, salary and promotional

opportunities. All of these issues feed into previously mentioned areas of causes except the

salary. Did you know that CPS workers make on average less money than teachers? I do not

have to go into much depth about this issue. I think that analogy is good enough to explain the

money situation to most people.

Why is this issue? Who does it harm?

While, ignoring the obvious answer to this question of the children for a moment; let’s

take a moment to look at what this could do to state budgets. If you look at Appendix 1 which is


an analysis of the CPS agency in Texas and do just a little math; it is easy to see the effect of

worker turnover on state budgets. If there were 4551 workers with a turnover rate of 26% that is

1172 people that quit in 2012. If the average salary is $35,171 then the total state budget spent on

those workers that quit was $41,220,412. That is a lot of money in training, and knowledge and

experience walking out the door. It is an evolving problem; if that many people quit you have to

train that many more people you have to hire and training; draining state budgets when all state

budgets are cutting back. It might beg the question is it costing us more money to pay lower

salaries and fuel unhappy CPS workers or to pay high salaries and have higher retention rates?

There have been many studies that have finished research on the effects of caseworker

turnover on the children themselves. One study found that children who had more than one

caseworker had an almost 60% chance of finding a permanent placement with in the Adoption

and Safe Families Act timeframes. In fact, some states even have legal requirements for a case to

be solved and proof for a home to be unfit within a year or the child has to be given back to the

parents. In which case, the child would eventually be taken again, which causes a strain on

resources, time management, the court system and most importantly the children.

In fact findings do suggest that children who experienced multiple caseworkers have a

lack of stability, loss of trusting relationships and in some cases a loss at a second chance in life.

I did a stent of training with an organization called CASA of Johnson County. This organization

has sprouted up as a non-profit to help supplement the CPS agencies around the country. They

train volunteers to essentially be secondary caseworkers. They visit the children each week,

make sure their medical records get from place to place visit teachers and such things as that.

They essentially, stay with the child to keep at least one person who is stable in their

environment. In my training it was explained to us that during the one to two years that a child


can be in CPS that some can have as many as four to seven case workers. Every, time a new

caseworker appeared you would be there to keep them up to date, given them recommendations.

Each month these CASA members send reports to judges explaining what is going on and

making recommendations for placement and life improvements.

What Can Be Done?

There are many theories on what can be done to solve these problems the most easy

recommendation to be made is higher salaries and lower caseloads. We all know with state

budget cuts and economic reccessions that such a dream will not happen. With, this in mind let

us look at a few other options to help solve this crisis being had with Americas most at risk

children.

One article I read suggests that research should be done to empirically prove that

caseworker retention directly affects the development and life chances of youth who are affected

by the turnover. It also suggests that the youth themselves be brought in to give feedback and

offer changes. Nobody knows better how they were affected by these events more then the

people actually affected. They also suggest youths being involved in the recruitment and hiring

process.

Another, article suggests we should hit the senate and congress floors attempting to push

legislation through that would aid the social services industry. The author goes to great lengths to

explain that most people in the field do not want to be part of this process and that they should

pay more attention. He explains that the lack of budgetary surplus, combined with the slow rate

of growth makes funding from the government competitive and that he does not have a hand in

the legislation loses the funding. He also mentions that while gathering funding and legislation

from the government it is important to involve the public and inform the public why it is


necessary to have this money; especially, since it will most likely be their tax money that will be

funding your efforts.

The article I mentioned earlier by Strolin, J., McCarthy, M., & Caringi, J lays out a

different approach. It states that a need to have empirical scientific data to prove the cause and

effect relationships is necessary. Stating that data must be developed before an answer or

solution to the problem can even be discussed. They recommend a social Meta study be

completed; to allow for the most social change and progression within the social services

industry.

Lastly, the study done by Raycraft, J. suggests that our efforts should not be centered on

why people leave but, on why people stay. It suggests that there must be something in common

between the people who do not leave the industry rather than who leave. He suggests data be

collected on salaries, case rates, education levels to see if there is a common denominator or a

magic number that could solve the problems at hand.

Recommendations

The different ideas presented above represent a vast array of ideas in which how to deal

with the issues currently plaguing the social services industry. While, all of them make sense and

have their own merits. I have a few recommendations of my own that I think would direct us in

the right direction. While, studies are good we already know there is a problem let’s set out to

attempt to resolve the issues. I think the recommendations I have laid out below will go a long

way to at least put a dent into the current worker retention agencies. When an agency runs

efficiently it runs at its lowest operating costs. This in turn, saves us all money while also

keeping children stable and happy.


Recommendation 1- Infuse social services with funding for new hire training and retention

Recommendation 2- Work with people graduating in the social services with internships and in

school training. This allows for people leaving school to enter the field with more knowledge and

more capable training.

Recommendation 3- Mandatory in office counseling to help with Emotional Burnout.

Recommendation 4- Job Contracts – offer tuition reimbursement offers with contract

requirements for 3-5 years for recent college graduates to help with retention.

Recommendation 5- Create interactive online resource services to aid social workers with

information and the tools necessary to complete their jobs with little supervision.

Recommendation 6- Keep workers involved with some children after placement, positive

reinforcement goes a long way to give job satisfaction. The desire to make a difference and to

actually see that difference made could be the difference between some workers leaving and

staying.

Recommendation 7- Increased salary ranges for seasoned social workers, a goal and a clear

vision of promotion goes a far way.

Recommendation 8- Slow increase of case loads, better to overload seasoned more well paid

workers then brand new workers, attempting to stay near the lower levels of case retention

during the first two years of residency for social workers.


References

Balfour, D., & Neff, D. (1993). Predicting and managing turnover in human service agencies: A case study of an organization in… Public Personnel Management, 22(3), 473-473. Retrieved November 22, 2014, from EBSCO Discovery Services.

Burstain, J. (2009, February 4). A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF CASEWORKER TURNOVER WITHIN CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES. Retrieved October 29, 2014. http://library.cppp.org/files/4/364%20DFPS%20workforce.pdf .

Keel, J. (2013, May 1). Caseload and Staffing Analysis for Child Protective Services at the Department of Family and Protective Services. Retrieved November 29, 2014, from http://www.sao.state.tx.us/reports/main/13-036.pdf

Homan, M. S. (2011). Promoting community change: Making it happen in the real world (5

thed.). Belmont, CA: Books/Cole Cengage.

Raycraft, J. (1994). The Party Isn’t Over: The Agency Role in the Retention of Public Child Welfare Caseworkers. Social Work, 39(1), 75-80. Retrieved November 22, 2014, from EBSCO Discovery Services.

Strolin-Goltzman, J., Kollar, S., & Trinkle, J. (2010). Listening to the Voices of Children in Foster Care: Youths Speak Out about Child Welfare Workforce Turnover and Selection. Social Work,55(1), 47-53. Retrieved November 22, 2014, from EBSCO Discovery Services.

Strolin, J., McCarthy, M., & Caringi, J. (2007). Causes and Effects of Child Welfare Workforce Turnover: Current State of Knowledge and Future Directions. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 1(2), 29-52. Retrieved November 22, 2014, from EBSCO Discovery Services.

Sudol, T. (2009, August 1). Workforce Issues in Child Welfare. Retrieved October 29, 2014. http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/nrcfcpp/info_services/Sudol_Info%20Pack_Workforce%20Issues_Aug%202009.pdf

Worker Turnover. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2014. https://www.childwelfare.gov/management/workforce/retention/turnover.cfm


Appendix 1

Documents

Final Paper