Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study

<p> High turnover of child welfare workers is a problem to the children and families that receive services and the child welfare organizations that lose their staff. For children and their families, turnover of their assigned worker may interrupt their ability to achieve their permanency goals...

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Main Author: Vajdic-Pena, Andrea
Language:EN
Published: Walden University 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10747883
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spelling ndltd-PROQUEST-oai-pqdtoai.proquest.com-107478832018-04-19T16:00:55Z Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study Vajdic-Pena, Andrea Social research|Social work|Organization theory <p> High turnover of child welfare workers is a problem to the children and families that receive services and the child welfare organizations that lose their staff. For children and their families, turnover of their assigned worker may interrupt their ability to achieve their permanency goals. Child welfare organizations encounter high costs for hiring staff due to the turnover and the staff that remain suffer with higher caseloads and not being able to provide the quality of services that they should be able to offer. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of child welfare workers who remained with the same employer for 3 years or more. The conceptual framework consisted of 2 theories: organizational climate and organizational culture theory. Two focus groups, consisting of 3 participants from an urban community and 5 participants from a rural community, were used. A snowball sampling method was used to obtain the sample. A content analysis was conducted to discover major and minor themes. This study revealed that 5 factors contribute toward retention: a) caseload size; b) educational background and training; c) recruitment, screening, and selection; d) supervisory support; and e) peer support were supported by all 8 participants. In addition, a new factor of self-care emerged as a result of this study. While all the child welfare workers experienced all the factors that could have resulted in their turnover, due to implementation of self-care techniques they ended up remaining from 3 years to 13 years. Exploring self-care as an answer toward retention is worth exploring and can contribute toward social change in the field of child welfare.</p><p> Walden University 2018-04-18 00:00:00.0 thesis http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10747883 EN
collection NDLTD
language EN
sources NDLTD
topic Social research|Social work|Organization theory
spellingShingle Social research|Social work|Organization theory
Vajdic-Pena, Andrea
Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study
description <p> High turnover of child welfare workers is a problem to the children and families that receive services and the child welfare organizations that lose their staff. For children and their families, turnover of their assigned worker may interrupt their ability to achieve their permanency goals. Child welfare organizations encounter high costs for hiring staff due to the turnover and the staff that remain suffer with higher caseloads and not being able to provide the quality of services that they should be able to offer. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of child welfare workers who remained with the same employer for 3 years or more. The conceptual framework consisted of 2 theories: organizational climate and organizational culture theory. Two focus groups, consisting of 3 participants from an urban community and 5 participants from a rural community, were used. A snowball sampling method was used to obtain the sample. A content analysis was conducted to discover major and minor themes. This study revealed that 5 factors contribute toward retention: a) caseload size; b) educational background and training; c) recruitment, screening, and selection; d) supervisory support; and e) peer support were supported by all 8 participants. In addition, a new factor of self-care emerged as a result of this study. While all the child welfare workers experienced all the factors that could have resulted in their turnover, due to implementation of self-care techniques they ended up remaining from 3 years to 13 years. Exploring self-care as an answer toward retention is worth exploring and can contribute toward social change in the field of child welfare.</p><p>
author Vajdic-Pena, Andrea
author_facet Vajdic-Pena, Andrea
author_sort Vajdic-Pena, Andrea
title Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study
title_short Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study
title_full Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study
title_fullStr Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study
title_full_unstemmed Long-Term Retention Among Child Welfare Workers in Michigan| A Phenomenological Study
title_sort long-term retention among child welfare workers in michigan| a phenomenological study
publisher Walden University
publishDate 2018
url http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10747883
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