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Full-Text Articles in Social Work

Retention Of Child Welfare Caseworkers: The Wisdom Of Supervisors, Austin G. Griffiths, Patricia Desrosiers, Jay Gabbard, David Royse, Kristine Piescher Jan 2019

Retention Of Child Welfare Caseworkers: The Wisdom Of Supervisors, Austin G. Griffiths, Patricia Desrosiers, Jay Gabbard, David Royse, Kristine Piescher

Social Work Faculty Publications

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 …


Child Sexual Abuse And The Impact Of Rurality On Foster Care Outcomes: An Exploratory Analysis, Austin G. Griffiths, April L. Murphy, Whitney Harper Jan 2016

Child Sexual Abuse And The Impact Of Rurality On Foster Care Outcomes: An Exploratory Analysis, Austin G. Griffiths, April L. Murphy, Whitney Harper

Social Work Faculty Publications

Given the cost of long-term foster care placement in both human and economic terms, few studies have specifically explored if any factors help to predict why this vulnerable population spends significantly more time in foster care. The overarching goal of this exploratory study was to use binary logistic regression to investigate whether any child demographic or environmental characteristics predicted the discharge of a child placed in Kentucky's foster care system for child sexual abuse. Results indicated that children in the most rural areas of the state were over 10 times more likely to be discharged from foster care during the …


When Personal Dreams Derail, Rural Cameroonian Women Aspire For Their Children, Akuri John, Susan Weinger, Barbara Barton Nov 2009

When Personal Dreams Derail, Rural Cameroonian Women Aspire For Their Children, Akuri John, Susan Weinger, Barbara Barton

Social Work Faculty Publications

Data gathered from a convenience sample of 36 women who reside in rural villages lying on the outskirts of Buea, Cameroon is not consistent with the "culture of poverty" proposition which states that personal characteristics of the poor tie them to a life of poverty. These findings run counter to an assumed "culture of poverty" in which persons do not hold career aspirations and socialize their children with attitudes that assure the generational transmission of poverty. Respondents, as a case vignette illustrates, conveyed that besides marriage they had wanted a career in order to achieve a living wage. After their …


Four Commentaries: How We Can Better Protect Children From Abuse And Neglect, Leroy H. Pelton Jan 1998

Four Commentaries: How We Can Better Protect Children From Abuse And Neglect, Leroy H. Pelton

Social Work Faculty Publications

The fundamental structure of the public child welfare system is that of a coercive apparatus wrapped in a helping orientation. Agencies ostensibly having the mission to help are mandated to ask whether parents can be blamed for their child welfare problems, and these agencies have the power to remove children from their homes. Thus, the public child welfare agency has a dual-role structure: On one hand, the agency attempts to engage in prevention and support, and to promote family preservation; on the other hand, it also has the task of investigating complaints against parents and removing children from them. This …