Child Welfare Worker Caseload: What's Just Right?(Report)

The goal of the child welfare system is to ensure safety, permanency, and well-being for all children who come to the attention of the child welfare system" (Child Welfare League of America [CWLA], n.d.-a, [paragraph] 5). These goals cannot be met, however, without sufficient time for child welfare workers to spend with families. The Children's Bureau (2002) family service reviews of multiple states found that states where workers most consistently visited children best met performance standards. In 2006, the top two challenges reported by states were providing adequate services for children and families and recruiting and retaining caseworkers (U.S. Government Accountability Office [GAO], 2006). High personnel vacancy and high staff turnover rates are integrally related to excessive workloads, defined as time involved in completing job tasks, and caseloads, defined as time spent with clients, which states report are too large to meet client needs (Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., 1978; GAO, 2006). Failure to set and maintain reasonable workloads and caseloads can result in two important negative outcomes. First, federal, state, and other funding sources mandate child welfare system quality standards, and failure to meet these standards can jeopardize funding (American Public Human Services Association [APHSA], 2005; Scarcella, Bess, Zielewski, & Geen, 2006). More important, excessive caseloads can lead to workers making mistakes that harm children (McCall, 1998) and may have liability repercussions that could devastate an agency (Herman, 2005). Here, we posit a new and empirically rigorous methodology that child welfare agencies can use to set and maintain a reasonable workload and caseload, which is paramount to effective functioning.