GROW Center Logic Model Narrative by fsuchildwelfare

Logic Model NOVEMBER 2021

Introduction LOGIC MODEL NARRATIVE FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE The Florida Institute for Child Welfare’s GROW Center is committed to innovating the learning experience through academic innovation, robust career long professional advancement opportunities, and holistic support of the workforce. Additionally, it aims to transform the workplace through specialized capacity building and targeted technical assistance to Florida-based public and private child welfare organizations.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

LOGIC MODEL DIAGRAM

Logic model based on tools/processes created by the Kellogg Foundation; drawing on approaches disseminated by Dr. Beth S. Novak (2021) Solving Public Problems: A Practical Guide to Fix Our Government and Change Our World, (New Haven: Yale University Press), and the MacArthur Foundation Research Foundation on Opening Governance.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

Where We Are THE CURRENT SITUATION WITH FLORIDA’S CHILD WELFARE WORKFORCE

Transforming child welfare in Florida into a system that prioritizes thriving children and families requires a thriving workforce, though significant turnover makes meaningful change to the system, and to child and family outcomes, unlikely. The Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families (FSPSF),2 a longitudinal study of Florida’s child welfare workforce (2015-2020), found that 81% of newly hired frontline workers left their original agency within threeand-a-half years, with the majority leaving within the first 18 months. Workers in the study reported they primarily departed due to job responsibilities (e.g., complex caseloads, emotional difficulty of the work, inability to utilize skills) or the agency environment (e.g., unreasonable expectations of workers, little concern for workers, few opportunities for

advancement). Other departure reasons included supervision challenges (e.g., lack of supervisor availability), personal reasons (e.g., lack of work/life balance), or other career opportunities (e.g., better work opportunity, return to school). Moreover, physical and emotional well-being declined for workers over the first 12 months of employment, and particularly within the first six months. Despite most well-being measures stabilizing by 18 months, none returned to baseline. These and other available research findings indicate the need for improved workforce support, both to ameliorate challenges within child welfare, but also the impact those challenges have on the performance of related systems that comprise the child well-being ecosystem.

Wilke, D. J., Radey, M., & Magruder, L. (2020). The Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families final report, 2015 – 2020. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/fsuchildwelfare/docs/fspsf_fr_2015-2020_102220

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

Where We Are Going THE GROW CENTER’S VISION FOR IMPACT

The GROW Center will offer career-long learning and support opportunities for the child welfare workforce, from classroom to casework to competent leadership. Ultimately, the GROW Center aims to foster a thriving workforce that positively impacts outcomes for children and families and shows evidence of overall enhancement in job/career satisfaction and effective interorganizational partnerships led by experienced, collaborative, and competent leaders.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

How We Are Getting There THE INPUTS, ACTIVITIES, PARTICIPANTS, AND OUTCOMES OF THE GROW CENTER

Academic Innovation In alignment with the system’s overall shift to an upstream approach, the GROW Center will engage with students through interactive, interdisciplinary learning opportunities which depict the complexities of child welfare work and families. As part of SB1326, this will include a re-design of social work curriculum, specifically focusing on the integration of problem-based learning using relevant child welfare content and innovative tools, such as virtual reality and enhanced internship opportunities. The curriculum re-design is one way in which the GROW Center will increase preparation and self-efficacy among those entering the workforce. Further, engaging in academic and system partnerships to design the curriculum is a significant point of entry for increasing communication and networking among child welfare stakeholders and professionals. This enhanced university curricula will be disseminated to other universities and will include additional resources and supports for both faculty and students, which serves to increase alignment of workforce education.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

Training/Technical Assistance For those in the field, robust training opportunities will be available and integrated with the pre-service content to continue to increase preparation and self-efficacy among workers. GROW will also engage in cross-training with system partners to increase communication and networking among professionals in tangential child- and family-serving organizations and increase alignment of workforce education. The GROW Center will develop specialized professional certifications that offer workers an opportunity to gain expertise in prevalent child welfare topics (e.g., substance use disorders) through intensive hybrid (i.e., online and in-person) training. All specialty certifications are fully integrated into the Department of Children and Families career ladder, so participants have a clear developmental pathway. These certifications will not only improve worker job satisfaction by allowing for increased professionalization, skill utilization and mentoring/coaching, but also better support the system through advanced and diverse competencies among workers to address the complexity of cases. In partnership with consultants and academic partners, the Institute will establish the Alliance for Workforce Enhancement (AWE), an initiative partnering with selected sites to increase agency capacity to create and sustain change efforts. Relying on site-specific data, each AWE site will receive intensive specialized technical assistance toward remedying an area of challenge. Consultants will be utilized to support sites in evaluating and strategizing a plan for the challenges that arise in the assessment period. This also includes identifying, selecting, and implementing solution-focused interventions. While AWE offers concrete remedies for agency challenges, it also serves as a capacity-building exercise to help agencies develop a process for future change efforts independent of AWE, which can lead to increased agency-led organizational capacity building initiatives in the future. In addition, all site participants will have voluntary connection to well-being resources, while site leaders will participate in the Institute-developed Leadership Academy.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

Pathway to Leadership

In addition to topical training opportunities, the GROW Center will support a pathway to leadership by providing workers with access to leadership development resources. To support workers at all levels, the GROW Center will host both short- and long-term leadership capacity building programming. Short-term programming will include educational opportunities (e.g., webinars and leadership coaching sessions). Long-term programming includes the Alliance for Workforce Enhancement’s (AWE) Leadership Academy, which will be available to select sites as a unique benefit of participation in this intensive technical assistance initiative. The Leadership Academy will be developed based on the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute’s existing curriculum for supervisors and managers, with a plan of expansion of content to other roles (e.g., frontline professionals). AWE-participating leaders will also receive executive leadership coaching and well-being support.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

Mentoring/Coaching To support the overall well-being of workers and their skill development, the GROW Center will offer mentoring and coaching to the workforce, with a particular focus on frontline professionals. In addition to a strong path for professional development, ongoing reflective supervision (RS) is needed to enhance and maintain the knowledge base of child welfare professionals of all types and to provide support for ongoing career opportunities. RS is a relationship-based approach to supervision that allows for the exploration of the feelings, thoughts, and interactions that can occur when working with high-risk families who have experienced trauma. In this context, RS is intended to increase awareness and connection to well-being resources among workers and improve worker well-being and job satisfaction by remediating the burnout and secondary traumatic stress that has been persistent within our workforce. Additionally, AWE site participants will engage in well-being and resiliency groups at the onset and throughout the program to establish enough sense of worker well-being that meaningful agency-wide change can be achieved. The well-being and resiliency groups will be opportunities for frontline caseworkers, supervisors, and managers to have a standing session with professionals who are focused on building up their fortitude to care for themselves, their staff, and those on their caseloads.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

Partnerships Throughout all of the GROW Center’s programming is an underlying focus on system partnerships. Partnership with DCF and CBC leaders and providers at all levels will create a collaborative design process for systemic change. These multiple and varied partnerships serve to increase communication and networking among child welfare stakeholders and professionals which eventually will contribute to increased alignment of workforce education, programming, and professionalization. As part of this effort, the Institute will establish the GROW Center Advisory Council, the members of which will offer their expertise toward the ongoing development of the GROW Center.

Research and Evaluation

The Institute will use workforce data to inform the development of timely and sustainable approaches to workforce enhancement. As the FSPSF serves as a cornerstone of the developing GROW Center, the Institute will support ongoing FSPSF analyses to inform GROW Center operations. This robust longitudinal dataset (2015-2020) will be complemented by an annual workforce survey to ensure GROW activities align with current workforce needs. Institute staff and academic partners and affiliates will conduct formative and summative evaluations of all major GROW initiatives to establish sound processes and determine if and how activities contribute to meeting GROW outcomes. In addition, the Institute will support emergent research and evaluation relevant to supporting a thriving child welfare workforce in Florida. These research and evaluation activities support increased systemwide understanding of emergent recruitment, retention, and turnover issues.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

Operating in Context INFLUENTIAL FACTORS IMPACTING THE GROW CENTER The GROW Center activities, and ultimately outcomes, are partially dependent on several important assumptions: 1) There is readiness within our child welfare workforce to partner across the state which may be challenging given limited bandwidth and capacity. 2) The Family First Prevention Services Act will instill urgency to develop plans to transform the professional workforce. 3) The development of a statewide, collaborative design process will create strong investments for professionalizing the workforce across subsystems.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE

The Roadmap CONNECTING OUTCOMES FOR A THRIVING WORKFORCE

The GROW Center activities intend to transform both the worker experience and the agency/organizational environment. For workers, raising awareness and connection to well-being resources and increasing their preparation and self-efficacy will serve to improve their overall well-being and job satisfaction. It will also enhance the overall workforce by establishing staff with advanced and diverse competencies to address the complexity of child welfare work. For agencies, increasing capacity to create and sustain change efforts will increase agency-led capacity building initiatives. As the GROW Center evolves, increased stakeholder communication and networking and a unified understanding of current workforce challenges will promote the alignment of evidence-driven workforce education, programming, and professionalization. This alignment, in conjunction with well-prepared

workers at supportive agencies, will contribute to improved recruitment and retention of frontline child welfare professionals. With this supportive infrastructure, we expect Florida to have a thriving workforce that positively impacts outcomes for children and families through competent leaders embedded in all organizational levels, improved system partnerships, increased stability in the child welfare workforce, and an enhanced workforce capacity to cultivate ongoing well-being support.

THE GROW CENTER AT THE FLORIDA INSTITUTE FOR CHILD WELFARE