Fatal error: The missing ingredient in child welfare reform: part 2.

Part 1 of this column (Child Welfare, Vol. 82, No. 6) asserted that efforts to reform the U.S. child welfare system have failed to address the most fundamental element in reform: the qualifications of the people who actually deliver child welfare services. Part 1 reviewed the evidence supporting the value of social work education and organizational factors in enhancing performance and increasing staff retention. Part 2 turns to the research on effective interventions in child welfare to further substantiate the urgent need for a more professional workforce. Intervention Research Studies of critical factors in effective child welfare service delivery make a compelling case for the need for skilled casework staff. Evidence points to engagement of families and comprehensive, individualized assessment as the essential prerequisites in helping families make changes to ensure the safety and well-being of their children (Dawson & Berry, 2002; Gaudin, 1993; Macdonald, 2001). Interventions with the best evidence of effectiveness emphasize skill building (Daro, 1988; Maluccio, 1999), include concrete services (Gaudin, 1993), are cognitive-behavioral or multisystemic (Corcoran, 2000; Macdonald, 2001), establish clear and measurable goals (Daro, 1988), and address social isolation (Corcoran, 2000; Gaudin, 1993; Gaudin, Wodarski, Arkinson, & Avery, 1990/ 1991). These characteristics affirm the value of skilled, intensive social work services grounded in an ecological perspective. Research is beginning to show that critical decisions about child safety and permanence, in courts and child welfare agencies, are often determined more by a family's compliance than by real change (Brank, Williams, Weisz, & Ray, 2001; Schene, 1996). This may be an artifact of the adversarial legal system, but good child welfare decisions must be based on accurate, thorough assessment, and such assessment is a sophisticated undertaking. It requires knowledge of human behavior, factors underlying child maltreatment, and how risks and protective factors interact to produce an overall picture of a family's needs (DePanfilis, 1999; English, 1999; Macdonald, 2001). Given job qualifications and turnover rates averaging 20% (Child Welfare League of America, 2001), most direct-service staff are without the requisite knowledge and skills to make such assessments. In their anxiety to demonstrate to the court that they have made reasonable efforts to serve families, caseworkers, with little understanding of effective interventions, make referrals to a host of services. The result is that agencies spend millions of dollars with limited evidence of any real benefit. They send children to psychotherapy and families to support programs despite research that casts doubt on the effectiveness of these services with child abuse and neglect populations (Layzer, Goodson, Bernstein, & Price, 2001; Weiss, Catron, Harris, & Phung, 1999). Similarly, although some models of parent education have empirical support, many do not (Dore & Lee, 1999), and agency staff generally are not equipped to know the difference. In this fragmented system, with whom do families build the trust that underlies effective helping-the transportation provider, the psychologist, the tutor, the visitation supervisor, the homemaker aide, the parent educator, or the court-appointed special advocate? Who integrates the reports and recommendations from this array of service providers into a coherent plan tailored to the family's needs? Who intervenes when professionals disagree? Who fills in the missing information? Certainly not a caseworker whose agency defines his or her role as only a broker of services. Conclusion Attempts to shore up a failing child welfare system have not worked because they have relied on simplistic, regulatory remedies that are not responsive to the complex nature of agencies' work. Families require a response from professionals who understand human behavior, social systems, and child maltreatment's underlying factors. …