Sharing practical ideas among counties can help us all to do our jobs smarter. This month we are proud to profile Onslow County Social Services. So take a look at what Onslow County Social Services has done. Like most of us in North Carolina, Onslow County has been struggling with the impact of Social Work turnover in the Child Protective Services units. A full annual caseload for a seasoned CPS investigation worker should be between 120 and 140 cases assigned.
Retention clearly becomes an extremely important issue.
There was an 87 percent retention rate among those who, in addition to having a BSW, also had a placement internship in the social service agency prior to working there. The clear implication was that we would do well to recruit from the ranks of BSW students, and even better if we could recruit from BSW students who did their internship in our agency. We believed it was to our benefit to have an employee who primarily accountable to us. Finally, we wanted to be sure that we had an opportunity to see what kind of work this person did so that if they chose to apply for employment after graduation, we could evaluate them. We would have preferred to hire the students as part time social workers, however, since they had not graduated, they do not qualify.