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This article describes differences in perceptions of the child welfare work environment among Title IV-E educated individuals who remain within public child welfare and those who sought employment elsewhere after fulfilling a legal work commitment. Job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, and personal accomplishment were predictive of staying versus leaving. The empirical evidence suggests that efforts to retain highly skilled and educated public child welfare workers should focus on creating positive organizational climates within agencies.
Public child welfare is under great stress in the United States. All informed parties acknowledge that the patchwork quilt of state and federal laws, regulations, and agencies do not always function as a coherent system. Indeed, many child welfare agencies have been found deficient by the courts and the agencies in more than two dozen states have been taken over by receivers under court order. In virtually every public child welfare agency, personnel issues are among the most challenging (U.S. Government Accounting Office, 1995, 2003). High personnel vacancy rates, high staff turnover rates, and excessive caseloads are among the most frequently identified problems contributing to the difficulties child welfare agencies have in fulfilling their legal mandate and in achieving the standards of service the public has a right to expect of the agency entrusted with protecting the well being of society's most vulnerable children (U.S. Government Accounting Office, 2003).
In the field of public child welfare, the shortage of professional personnel is recognized as a nationwide problem. The United States Children's Bureau, the Child Welfare League of America, the National Association of Social Workers, the Council on Social Work Education, the American Public Human Services Association, the American Humane Association, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, federal and state courts, state governments, and others have been working individually and collectively to understand and reverse the trends that have so seriously eroded public, professional, judicial, and legislative confidence in public child welfare. High personnel vacancy and turnover rates, less than desirable educational levels of staff, court determinations of inadequate service, the results of the federal Child and Family Services Review, and other indicators of instability and substandard competency levels are as prevalent as the explanations for the problems (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1993; U.S. Government Accounting...