Child Welfare Training: The National Child Welfare Workforce Institute

The purpose of this FOA is to establish, by awarding one cooperative agreement, a National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) to advance federal priorities to improve safety, permanency, and well-being by building the capacity of child welfare professionals and improving the organizations that recruit, train, supervise, manage, and retain them. The NCWWI will play a national leadership role in the field of child welfare in the following broad areas: (1)Demonstrating how university partnerships support workforce development; (2) Implementing organizational interventions to improve workforce recruitment and retention; (3) Providing leadership training across the child welfare career spectrum; (4) Developing cross system approaches to improve worker and child outcomes; and (5) Building evidence of best practices in workforce development. A broad range of activities will be undertaken by the NCWWI to promote effective child welfare practice, enhance agency efforts to create supportive work environments, and improve worker recruitment and retention outcomes by: Implementing an innovative, comprehensive and integrated organizational, educational, and professional development approach to effective child welfare workforce development building on the last two iterations of NCWWI work; Implementing effective workforce organizational interventions that result in improved agency climate, worker preparation, recruitment, and retention outcomes for agencies; such as reduction in emotional stress and worker burnout, increased length of stay for workers, changes in worker attitude and satisfaction, increased recruitment, etc.; Demonstrating expertise in collecting and disseminating information about effective and promising workforce practices in innovative ways; Implementing an intensive, structured research design that rigorously evaluates and measures the impact of each major component of the project and a cross-site evaluation that will build a body of knowledge regarding the appropriate elements to consider and address when implementing a comprehensive model of effective workforce development; and Demonstrating improved safety, well-being, permanency and placement stability outcomes for children and youth in agency care. This will be a 60-month project period with five 12-month budget periods.