ARTICLE SUMMARY WORKFORCE
Critical Thinking in Child Welfare Supervision Lietz, C. A. (2010). Critical thinking in child welfare supervision. Administration in Social Work, 34, 68-78. doi: 10.1080/03643100903432966
Issue
Child welfare administrators are often tasked with preparing new child welfare professionals, typically frontline workers, for the challenging responsibilities of assessing and responding to reports of child maltreatment. A crucial part of this training process is the supervision, which is arguably as critical of a factor in ensuring quality services as training. Through supervision, the policies and procedures often learned during the training sessions can be understood through monitored practice. Providing a component of educational supervision can promote critical thinking about the policies and procedures. In addition to providing the frontline workers with educational supervision, child welfare supervisors are often tasked with monitoring policies, procedures and paperwork in an effort to provide accountability to their supervisees. Supervisors are tasked with preparing their frontline workers to deal with the complexities of assessing child safety, which includes appropriately utilizing standardized assessments while also employing critical thinking strategies. Understanding the critical thinking component of the supervisory sessions is a crucial piece, specifically given that a combination of critical thinking and utilization of assessment tools is required for frontline workers to make sound decisions.
Method
To assess the critical thinking occurring in the supervision process at the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) in Arizona, an online self-reported survey instrument was created. The concurrent nested research design included 21 close-ended qualitative questions and 2 open-ended qualitative questions. The variables included perceived quality of the supervisory relationship, availability of the supervisor, level of learning occurring as a result of the supervision, and the level of critical thinking during the supervision. Nine questions were utilized to measure critical thinking, which were created to comprise a critical thinking scale. The sample consisted of administrators, supervisors, and caseworkers at DCYF throughout the state with the exception of child welfare professionals working in District 4 of the state as there was an oversight when forwarding the email. The response rate was approximately 58 percent, resulting in a sample size of 348. Of this sample, 75 percent identified as case managers working directly with families in the field and 25 percent of the sample were supervisors and administrators at DCYF. Almost half of the sample (40%) reported working for DCYF less than 3 years.
Findings
The critical thinking scores ranged from 11 to 52, with a mean of 26.75, suggesting that DCYF workers are between “somewhat disagree” and “somewhat agree” on average regarding their impressions that critical thinking occurs during supervision. The table below provides the mean scores by district, and what is interesting is that there is little variance between districts in critical thinking scores. On a whole, the supervision process seems to provide frontline workers with some critical thinking skills, which was supported by the qualitative data, with respondents suggesting that their supervisors help them gain a broader view to make better service decisions. Table 1: Critical Thinking Scores DISTRICT
N
MEAN
SD
District 1
138
27.51
7.25
District 2
74
24.53
7.74
District 3
30
23.80
7.62
District 4
0
District 5
20
28.95
7.76
District 6
30
25.80
10.19
Hotline
19
31.05
8.73
All Districts
311
26.75
7.97
Missing data = 37
WORKFORCE: Child welfare case managers and child protective investigators
Findings
While there were positive findings in this study, the overall mean of 26.75 indicates an opportunity to promote greater critical thinking within supervision. This was supported by the participants as evidenced by their responses to the open-ended questions. Respondents seemed to want more questions that challenged the respondentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision-making. Additionally, respondents identified a need for creative solutions or identifying multiple solutions, which are components to critical thinking. Respondents also indicated that their supervisors spent too much of the time during supervision meeting talking and suggested that supervisors talk less and listen more. This is indicative that supervisors need to ask more leading questions of their workers that promote deep, critical thought. Finally, respondents suggested that more focus should be on seeing other points of view or different perspectives. This suggests a lack of openness to diverse perspectives, a component to critical thinking. About half of the respondents reported that their supervisor promoted critical thinking while the other half did not. A regression analysis was conducted to explore factors that predict different levels in this outcome variable. The analysis shows that there were two significant predictors of critical thinking: quality of supervisor relationship (β = .173, p < .001) and the availability of the supervisor (β = .764, p < .001).
Implications
The findings are encouraging given the number of respondents who reported some level of critical thinking occurring during the supervision process. However, with nearly half of the respondents reporting no critical thinking, there is still room for improvement. Given the two predictive variables that increase the likelihood of critical thinking are the relationship between the supervisor and supervisee and the availability of the supervisor, the findings indicate that supervisors at DCYF need to be trained and supported to develop positive relationships. Supervisors also need to make time for their supervisees to support the process of critical thinking. Supervisors at DCYF often carry a caseload in addition to their supervisory responsibilities. Given the need for supervisors to spend time fostering their relationships and being available to their supervisees, it is recommended that the workload balance shift to allow more time for supervisory activities. This may seem like a difficult task initially, particularly given that when turnover happens, supervisors are tasked with stepping in and taking over those cases. It can be argued that when supervisors have the time to devote to their supervisory tasks, job satisfaction and retention increase. Another potential area for improvement is with the federal and state reporting requirements, which often keeps workers and administrators in their offices filing paperwork instead of interacting with families, communities, or each other. This decreases the time available for critical reflection, necessary for critical thinking.
WORKFORCE: Child welfare case managers and child protective investigators