WHY DO THEY LEAVE AND WHERE DO THEY GO? BACKGROUND CONTACT US
Questions or comments regarding findings can be directed to the Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families Principal Investigator, Dr. Dina Wilke, at dwilke@fsu.edu.
JUNE 2022
Child welfare professionals provide essential, mandated services to protect children from abuse and neglect. The highstakes nature of child welfare work together with hostile clients, high caseloads, and extensive, time-sensitive documentation requirements contribute to high levels of turnover.1 Worker turnover impacts families through less contact with workers and disrupted worker-client relationships,2 and studies of youth aging out of care suggest that turnover also leads to a reluctance to trust workers.3 However, a degree of turnover is inevitable and can be healthy for individual workers, organizations, and broader society.4 Yet, estimated annual turnover rates of 20-40 percent in child welfare far exceed the 10-12 percent deemed optimal or healthy.5 This research brief will examine the destinations of workers who leave their baseline child welfare positions and their reasons for departure.
METHODS
The current study used the Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families (FSPSF) dataset (N =1,500 workers recruited during pre-service training) to examine departure from baseline agencies within the first three years after hire. Overall, 1,009 departing workers provided enough information to determine their job status and destination and 885 workers provided their reasons for departure. Departing workers were assigned to one of the following categories: a) departed to a different child welfare agency, b) departed to the health and human services (HHS) sector (e.g., mental health), c) departed to a position outside of the HHS sector (e.g., hospitality), d) departed without a plan for full-time employment, e) left the labor market (e.g., not job seeking). Those who left their agencies indicated up to 10 reasons for departure from a list of 39 options, and then were asked to identify the primary reason for departure from among those selected. Workers’ primary reasons for departure were grouped into broad categories: job responsibilities, agency environment, supervision, career opportunities, personal reasons, and some other reason, including involuntary departures.
FINDINGS DESTINATIONS FOLLOWING DEPARTURE Figure 1 displays the immediate destinations of workers following departure from baseline agencies: 23 percent moved to a different child welfare agency. Nearly equal proportions of workers, 29 percent and 25 percent, exited to a different HHS field or a position outside of HHS, respectively. Approximately 17 percent of workers 1 DePanfilis, D., & Zlotnik, J. L. (2008). Retention of front-line staff in child welfare: A systematic review of research. Children and Youth Services Review, 30(9), 995-1008. 2 US Department of Health and Human Services (US DHHS). (2020). Child and family services reviews aggregate report: Round 3: FYs 2015-2018. Author. 3 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, 47-53. 10.1093/sw/55.1.47. 4 Kimmitt, R. (2007). Why job churn is good. Washington Post, A17. 5 Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2015). 10 practices: A child welfare leader’s desk guide to building a high-performing agency. Retrieved from http://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-10Pracrticespart1-2015.pdf
left without a plan for employment and were either seeking work or working part-time jobs, and 6 percent were out of the labor force and not seeking employment.
Figure 1: Destinations for Departures from Baseline Positions
REASONS FOR DEPARTURE Across all waves of data collection, workers indicated the most common reason for departure was associated with the job responsibilities (27%). Examples of this category include working too many hours, having too many cases, or the work being too emotionally difficult. The second most common reason for departure (24%) was agencyrelated, usually unreasonable expectations and little concern for workers. Similar percentages of workers left due to career opportunities outside of child welfare or personal reasons (15% and 14% respectively). Slightly less than 10 percent of leavers did so because of concerns regarding supervision, indicating, for example, that their supervisor had unrealistic expectations or was not available. Further, departure did not change over time. Table 1 provides the primary reason for departure provided by workers’ destinations. For almost all destinations, the most common reason for departure was associated with the job responsibilities. The one exception was for workers departing to a different child welfare agency; the most common reason for departure for those workers was associated with the agency environment. Table 1: Reasons for Departure by Worker Destination Job Responsibilities
Agency Environment
Supervision
Career Opportunities
Personal Reasons
Other
Different CW Agency
22%
29%
9%
16%
14%
10%
Different HHS Field
36%
22%
8%
16%
9%
9%
Outside HHS
29%
25%
8%
15%
11%
12%
No Plan
24%
19%
11%
9%
21%
17%
Out of Labor Market
20%
14%
11%
14%
34%
8%
DISCUSSION
Overall, findings suggest high levels of turnover among newly-hired workers. By three years, almost 60 percent of workers had left child welfare with very few returning to the field. Job destinations and the reasons for departure of exiting workers indicates that much turnover may be preventable. Most departing workers left without a plan or entered other closely related HHS fields, suggesting they may have stayed in child welfare under different conditions. Workers leaving without a plan or to related HHS fields, particularly within the first 12 months, suggest that early supports for workers transitioning from training into casework could have maximum impact for retention efforts.