Factors influencing the retention of specially educated public child welfare workers

Although public child welfare has historically been a major employer of professional social workers, within the last twenty years MSW graduates have shunned public social services for the private sector. Using Title IV-E funds, universities have responded to this shortage by providing financial and educational incentives for graduate social work students to work with the diverse and complex cases in public child welfare. As a result, the numbers of graduate social workers seeking employment in public child welfare have increased, but questions remain about the extent to which professional social workers remain employed in public child welfare agencies beyond their employment payback period. This paper reports the results of one research study on the factors that affect the retention of these master's level child welfare workers.