Child Welfare Workforce

Child Welfare Workforce: Implications for the Private Nonprofit Sector

Contributor(s): Susan N. Dreyfus, Susan Dean Hornung

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The workforce factors and challenges confronted by the private sector are unique and growing. This paper summarizes discussions among a group of private agency leaders from Alliance member organizations who identified these challenges and provided strategies and recommendations to further a dialogue that will lead to effective solutions.

Research, experience, and common sense tell us how important staff on the front lines are to outcomes for children and families.

The Alliance for Children and Families views the focus on workforce issues in the private sector as timely, imperative, and critical to the improvement of child welfare outcomes. We applaud the current efforts of organizations such as the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), National Association of Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA), The Annie E Casey Foundation, Children’s Defense Fund, National Association of Social Workers (NASW), universities, and many others.

We are also concerned, however, that current efforts have not fully understood the workforce dynamic through the lens and experience of contracted providers of services.

In collaboration with other national organizations, the Alliance is committed to educating the field about the unique workforce issues confronting the private sector as new frameworks are developed to respond to the growing crisis in the child welfare workforce. To further this goal, Cornerstones for Kids agreed to underwrite a special private sector workforce emphasis at the Alliance’s 2006 National Leadership Conference on Child Welfare Issues, Jan. 26-28, 2006, in Clearwater, Fla. The conference allowed experts in the field to come together to share experiences, develop a policy agenda, and learn from peer insights.

Increasingly, private sector nonprofit organizations are on the front lines of the child welfare system, through the ongoing privatization and contracting of state and local child welfare activities that were once done only by public sector staff. This increased activity is occurring for a number of reasons, including cost control, innovation, a need for increased performance and quality, and a desire to deepen the understanding and engagement of the community through nonprofit community-based organizations and their missions.

Some public systems are just beginning to explore greater private sector engagement in their systems while others have years of experience we can and should learn from. It is important to explore the experiences and insights of all parties involved with privatization as they have tackled the mechanics of system design, financing, integration, standards, contracting, and system oversight.

However, it is equally important that we explore and understand what has been experienced and learned regarding workforce, shared values, partnership and collaboration, innovation, continuous improvement, flexibility, and defining and achieving outcomes for children, families, and communities.

It is our goal through this paper to explore insights and experiences on some of these issues from a private provider perspective as they surface from our specific emphasis on workforce capacity, quality, and development.

Private human service organizations are accountable for both their performance and the workplace environment they provide for their workforce. In accordance with their mission of fair treatment for families, they are obligated to extend this same quality of fairness to staff and to take responsibility for intervening with dynamics that could negatively influence their ability to achieve the agency’s mission and funder’s requirements.

Many of the causes of the child welfare workforce crisis reflect variables outside of the direct control of the private sector. Nonetheless, these organizations are obligated to actively and visibly collaborate and advocate for solutions for those factors that have a negative impact on a plentiful and high-performing workforce. Private agencies also may be better positioned than some public sector entities to create a positive organizational culture, in which their human resources practices align favorably with the values stated in their mission, in part due to their size and organizational structure.