Retention of Child Welfare Caseworkers: The Wisdom of Supervisors

Child welfare supervisors have a unique vantage point, leading local service delivery efforts while representing a larger organizational bureaucracy. They also play a key role in workforce stability, as high caseworker turnover remains a real problem that affects clients, communities, and agency budgets. Using a qualitative thematic content analysis to analyze data collected from a sample of public child welfare supervisors in a southern state (n = 117), findings from this study provide suggestions for systematically addressing workforce turnover through the unique perspective of the child welfare supervisor. Supervisors made recommendations to improve agency infrastructure, organizational climate, and organizational culture as areas for immediate consideration to address this significant problem.