Social Work Commons^™

Ethnic/Racial Matching Of Clients And Social Workers In Public Child Welfare, Robin Perry, Gordon E. Limb

Faculty Publications

Although considerable debate exists throughout the human-service literature regarding the potential benefits and limitations associated with ethnic/racial matching of clients and workers, there are few studies that examine the prevalence of this practice with large representative samples. This study utilizes a secondary analysis of data collected from 4813 public-child-welfare workers throughout California. Using census data to control for county-specific population demographics, American-Indian, Hispanic/Latino(a), Caucasian, and Asian-American child-welfare workers are more than two times more likely to have caseloads with a high percentage of clients who match their race/ethnicity than workers self-identified as another race/ethnicity. African-American workers are 1.28 times more …