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Full-Text Articles in Social Work
Caseworker Turnover In Foster Care Services: Problem Or Symptom? A System Dynamics Approach, Marian Joan Stahlschmidt
Caseworker Turnover In Foster Care Services: Problem Or Symptom? A System Dynamics Approach, Marian Joan Stahlschmidt
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Problem: Child welfare (CW) caseworkers perform a crucial role in our society--ensuring the safety, permanency, and well-being of one of our most vulnerable populations, victims of child maltreatment. Yet, since its inception in the early 20th century, CW, including foster care services, has been plagued by high turnover rates that have been associated with delayed permanency and recurrent maltreatment. This dissertation aimed to develop a dynamic hypothesis about the system structure that produces turnover in foster care services, to create a formal system dynamics simulation model representing the problem, to develop an intervention to reduce the problem, and to test …
Promoting Child Behavioral Health In Homeless Services: A Community-Based System Dynamics Approach, Katherine Marcal
Promoting Child Behavioral Health In Homeless Services: A Community-Based System Dynamics Approach, Katherine Marcal
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Families with children comprise one-third of the entire homeless population (Henry, Watt, Rosenthal, & Shivji, 2017). Homelessness exposes children to chaotic, unsafe living environments that pose threats to healthy development; unsurprisingly, children in homeless services display high rates of mental health disorders compared to stably housed children (Bassuk et al., 2015; Buckner, 2008). Despite concerted efforts at the state and local levels to end family homelessness by 2020, rates have remained largely unchanged over the past decade (Henry et al., 2017; U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, 2015). Additional indicators such as increasing wait times, average length of stay, and reentry …