Developing an Ecological Model of Turnover Intent: Associations Among Child Welfare Caseworkers’ Characteristics, Lived Experience, Professional Attitudes, Agency Culture, and Proclivity to Leave

Almost a quarter of the child welfare workforce leaves their job each year, and despite clarion calls over the decades, our insights into dynamics underlying turnover remain limited. Using survey data from 276 caseworkers in a midwestern state, this analysis explores an array of personality, stress, attitudinal, and perception measures and their association with three measures of turnover intent: thinking about quitting, intending to search, and intent to leave. Findings indicate that controlling for demographic factors, burnout, and confidence in decision support from agency leadership had consistent and strong associations with all three outcomes (positive for burnout; negative for decision support). In contrast, associations between conscientiousness, open-mindedness, secondary traumatic stress, and attitudes favoring family preservation over child safety varied in their significance, orientation, and strength depending on the outcome in question. Given that the most powerful and consistent predictors of turnover intentions are potentially malleable, these findings indicate that these are two important areas for agencies to consider developing interventions. Moreover, despite the commonalities, the finding that the three outcomes examined were associated with different predictors, suggests they may be distinguishing phases of contemplation and action along a pre-turnover continuum. Future research will explore the relative predictive validity of these scales.