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Katherine Briar-Lawson, Ph.D., MSW, is Dean and Professor in the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany, 
State University of New York, in Albany, NY.  
 
Copyright © 2014 Advances in Social Work Vol. 15 No. 1 (Spring 2014), 21-33 

Building the Social Work Workforce: Saving Lives and Families 

Katharine Briar-Lawson 

Abstract: This article depicts a journey over the decades to address some of the needs of 
children and families in the child welfare system. Recounting a few key milestones and 
challenges in the past 40 years, it is argued that workforce development is one key to 
improved outcomes for abused and neglected children and their families. Major events 
and several turning points are chronicled. Emerging workforce needs in aging are also 
cited as lessons learned from child welfare have implications for building a gero savvy 
social work workforce. Funding streams involving IV-E and Medicaid are discussed. It is 
argued that workforce development can be a life and death issue for some of these most 
vulnerable populations. Thus, the workforce development agenda must be at the forefront 
of the social work profession for the 21st century. Key funding streams are needed to 
foster investments in building and sustaining the social work workforce. 

Keywords: Workforce, IV-E, Medicaid, child welfare, aging, social work, university-
agency partnerships 

This article chronicles efforts to advance the leadership role of social workers to 
address the challenges of the most vulnerable children and families as well as the aging. 
Change strategies have involved the promotion of university–agency partnerships, 
workforce development, funding streams for social work education and new service 
delivery models. While much of the focus of my journey is centered on vulnerable 
children and families, by extension, inclusionary social work needs to comprise all ages. 
Thus, efforts at adapting some of these strategies to gerontological social work are 
delineated as well. 

I first briefly recount child welfare workforce challenges, crises, several firsthand 
accounts of developments in workforce agendas and historical markers. Efforts to 
promote service innovations related to vulnerable children and families are offered. 
Following this, a brief overview of implications for gerontological social work is 
presented with similar attention to both workforce funding and some innovations in 
service delivery. Lessons learned are offered as are action steps for future developments 
in the field, including educational and professional supports for social workers. 

Workforce development is not often thought of as a key facet of social work practice, 
let alone one that would be seen as a life and death issue for those we serve. Yet when 
workforce issues are overlooked, horrific consequences can occur. Children may die of 
abuse and neglect because a caseworker did not detect or understand domestic violence 
and its effects on the caregivers who subsequently cannot protect their child. An elder 
may leave the hospital with 921 different pills and may be unprepared for self-care in the 
community. Absent a trained social worker, the consequences may be toxic if not life 
threatening. 



Briar-Lawson/BUILDING THE SOCIAL WORK WORKFORCE 22 
 

This paper attempts to make the case that more attention is needed to promote 
workforce development, the partnerships that help incubate professional development of 
social workers and the potential funding streams that can attract social workers to the 
field and to working with some of the highest need populations. My journey has been one 
that has addressed some of these challenges. At the outset it is important to note that no 
journey is without partners along the way who open doors and make change 
synergistically possible. As change collaborators and facilitators we are always working 
with and through others. It is to them, gratefully, that I dedicate this article. 

Child Welfare: Partnership Movement 

We begin with child welfare, a field of practice that has long been the province of 
social work. From its inception as a field of practice for social workers over a century 
ago, social workers have been at the forefront of innovations to address the needs of the 
most vulnerable children and families (Briar-Lawson, McCarthy, & Dickinson, 2013). 
While opportunities have abounded for social workers to be leaders in child welfare, the 
very architecture of this field of practice has hinged on a well prepared and sustained 
social work workforce. 

Historically, from the emergence of the Children’s Bureau 100 years ago to the 
present, social work has been identified as the profession with the most stake and 
professional alignment with the most vulnerable children, namely those who are abused 
and neglected. As spearheads for and leaders in the development of the Children’s 
Bureau in 1912, social workers have worked to advance numerous reforms and 
innovations (Dickinson & Barth, 2013). These included Mother’s Pensions to prevent the 
need for institutional care for children whose mothers worked. In more recent decades, 
social workers have led innovations in home based services to prevent out of home 
placements (Landsman, 2013). In many cases such as these, social workers have been at 
the forefront, shaping many advances in child welfare.  

Yet, much of this capacity to build the field of practice in child welfare has been 
compromised by setbacks. One such impediment in progress, from my point of view, 
involved the declassification or deprofessionalization movement in public child welfare. 
This occurred in the late 1960s through the mid to late 1980s. From this setback, as the 
next section illustrates, the profession has tried to regain its foothold and, even more, to 
advance a reprofessionalization movement. Some might argue, in fact, that 
reprofessionalization also requires more integrated services such as those that once 
dominated public sector social services and public welfare services, prior to the 
separation of income from services (Berns, Briar-Lawson, & Kim, 2013). 

From Integrated Social Services to Deprofessionalization of Public Child 
Welfare 

Public child welfare services in the 1960s relied on social workers in AFDC or 
income maintenance roles to provide an integrated array of services including foster care, 
and special need grants to high need families to prevent out of home placement for their 
children. I learned, first hand, that through my welfare work (or income maintenance) 



ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Spring 2014, 15(1)  23 

service role (as a social work intern) in the 1960s that I was able to provide “long term 
care” for chronically fragile families with children at risk of out of home placement. This 
was made possible by casework services that included the ability as a caseworker to 
award “special needs” grants (beyond the basic welfare grant) to address unique family 
support needs. With the demise of such integrated services (casework and income 
supports) in the late 1960s and early 1970s (due to the separation of income support and 
social services) a radical role change occurred (Piliavin & Gross, 1977). Caseworkers, 
who had previously provided prevention as well as family preservation through income 
maintenance services, were either shifted over to newly emerging Child Protection 
Services (CPS) or Adult Protection Services (APS). My frontline work and that of others 
at the time made it possible for families to remain intact due to the supports, extra 
financial resources and ongoing casework services for mothers and children. The 
separation of income maintenance from services severed families from such family 
preservation supports. Instead of these long term family support roles that were possible 
in the former welfare caseworker model or public social services, emergent new roles in 
child welfare comprised predominately CPS. Foster care and adoption services, once part 
of welfare services, also moved over into the new public child welfare system. 
Meanwhile, instead of social workers being sought after and recruited for newly 
emerging investigatory roles in CPS, other kinds of hiring occurred. This meant that the 
roles and jobs that might have been held by social workers were now going to others, 
many of whom had no relevant human services preparation. Moreover, in many if not 
most civil service bureaucracies, social work was not recognized or prioritized as the 
preferred skill base for work with these CPS families. In fact, by the early 1990s and 
continuing on to this day, only a handful of states require social work as the degree for 
practice in public child welfare. 

Not surprisingly as public child welfare deprofessionalized, this field of service 
encountered many tragedies. High profile cases, media attention to horrific child deaths 
led, in many cases, local and state child welfare leaders to seek out help from schools of 
social work. Such help included delivery of training to caseworkers needing some 
exposure to social work knowledge and skills. It seemed so paradoxical that instead of 
hiring social workers, in many cases, untrained and uncredentialed applicants with a BA 
degree would be hired, only to face skill, practice and service crises that then resulted in 
requests to schools of social work to train these workers with “on the job” supports.  

Prior to this, one of the most popular and sought after jobs in social work at the time, 
at least as I recall from the late 1960s, was private adoption services. One might ask how 
is it possible that the child welfare field could have gone from being a destination for 
social workers, to a time in which to this day, since then, some 40+ years later, some 
county agencies in child welfare may not have seen a trained social worker in decades. 
How is it possible that the most vulnerable and highest need children and their families 
might be served by someone whose credentials, in some cases, were no more than a high 
school diploma? Had hospital operating rooms been purged of physicians there would be 
an outcry. This deprofessionalization movement, on the heels of the separation of income 
maintenance from services, constituted two strikes against the most vulnerable children 
and families. This more silent and hidden crisis for our most vulnerable children and 



Briar-Lawson/BUILDING THE SOCIAL WORK WORKFORCE 24 
 

families needed to be exposed. Moreover, when a high profile child welfare crisis 
occurred, such as a brutal beating or death of a child from abuse and neglect, the 
caseworker was often misrepresented and mislabeled in the media as being a “social 
worker.” Such public crises and tragedies compounded the recruitment and retention 
problems in public child welfare agencies. Thus not only did the crisis involve human 
and very public tragedies, workforce churning and turnover, but catapulted into the media 
and to the forefront of the public the denigration if not demonization of social work as a 
profession.  

In the late 1950s it had been estimated that more than half of public sector social 
service workers were trained social workers (Coll, 1995). Now the rates were very low, 
with prevalence rates of not more than 20-30% (see Ellett & Leighninger, 2006) being 
the norm. Such purging of the ranks of social work not only created skill, practice and 
service gaps but also eradicated or eroded social work values and knowledge as system 
drivers and redesign tools to address and improve practices. 

Such deprofessionalization processes may have been a cost-saving device for some 
agencies. Moreover, the bureaucratization of services with rule driven and prescribed 
approaches to serving these highest need children and families, while loathsome to some 
social workers, may have seemed to some bureaucrats an efficient alternative to the more 
discretionary, advocacy oriented and professionally informed casework practice of the 
past. In the absence of social workers, trained to assess and solve problems, an emergent 
practice model evolved involving case management. (Depending on the skill level of the 
worker, this model may encourage an under-emphasis on engagement and assessment 
while over emphasizing “handing off” to other service providers the responsibility for 
problem solving). Such case manager referrals might involve up to 14 service providers 
to whom the family was known. Thus the untrained caseworker may “hand off” families 
to other service providers to address their abuse and neglect, mental health, addiction, 
domestic violence, disabilities, health, parenting skills, housing, income, employment, 
education , criminal and juvenile justice, child care and related needs and issues. 

Crisis in CPS: Crisis in the Workforce 

Insufficient assessment and engagement skills, a by-product of some untrained 
workers, reached a turning point when crack cocaine epidemics hit impoverished 
communities in the late 1980s. Child abuse deaths abounded. There were rumors that 
some cities had a death a day. Recruited away from a faculty post to lead a state based 
child welfare agency in these times, I was able to see firsthand how the rising challenges 
of the highest need children and families eluded many of our schools of social work. Few 
schools at the time had a specialization in child welfare and even fewer prepared or 
encouraged graduates to enter public child welfare. Moreover, not all agreed in our 
profession that CPS services were the right or proper paradigm for the use of social work 
skills and talents, given the investigatory and often adversarial role of CPS workers 
(Pelton, 1991). At the time I wondered, too, why families needed to maim themselves and 
those they loved to get help that then was seen as potentially hurtful. This was because 
CPS was emerging as a stigmatized service, frightening to many families and 
communities, especially diverse families and communities. 



ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Spring 2014, 15(1)  25 

It is not surprising that vacancy rates of up to one third of the workforce in CPS were 
emerging in many states and counties across the country. CPS work units churned with 
turnover among caseworkers, in part because many had no preparation for human 
services work. Many were rightfully daunted by the unpredictability of the effects of 
drugs on their clients. Others experienced vicarious trauma. One child welfare 
administrator later recalled that when he was able to get caseloads down to the nationally 
recommended safety level of 15 families per worker, many of his caseworkers did not 
know what to do as problem solvers with their families as they had no social work 
preparation. It was then that he built a campaign to reprofessionalize the workforce with 
social workers being hired throughout his state public child welfare agency. 

Absent a skill base capable of addressing and delivering services tailored to the 
multiple challenges faced by vulnerable families, such turnover was not only predictable 
but an endemic indicator of the need for a workforce development campaign. In effect, 
the crisis among abused and neglected children culminating in high rates of child 
fatalities became a workforce crisis. 

NASW Commission on Families Addresses the Child Welfare Workforce Crisis 

To address this crisis I was fortunate to be able to have NASW as a change vehicle 
and a foundation for institutional reform. In fact, I was able to leverage change in my role 
as a newly appointed Chair of the Commission on Families for NASW and to approach, 
with Joan Zlotnik, staffing the Commission, the Acting Associate Commissioner of the 
Children’s Bureau. We made the case that there was a staffing crisis in child welfare, 
especially in CPS. Such findings had emerged at a national conference in Washington 
State, hosted by the American Humane Association. The panel, of which I was a part, had 
been assigned the task of addressing needed competencies for CPS. Yet each speaker 
representing a state or county system around the country spoke about the staff vacancy 
crisis in CPS. It seemed to me that the crisis was the opportunity to redouble the efforts of 
social work to become reinvolved and reinvested in public child welfare.  

University-agency IV-E Partnerships Emerge 

When Dr. Zlotnik and I approached the Children’s Bureau, in the late 1980s, we had 
identified the staffing crisis as the problem and came with a solution. We had evidence 
that federal funds, supporting the training of child welfare workers, through Section IV-E 
of the Social Security Act, were being used in Illinois with Schools of Social Work to 
educate social workers for public child welfare. At the time, very little in the field was 
known about IV-E and the potential to support the preparation of the workforce for child 
welfare. The Children’s Bureau response resulted in the funding of a national workshop 
at NASW on the workforce needs in child welfare. The NASW Commission on Families 
hosted this and other nationally significant meetings to advance a partnership agenda 
between Schools of Social Work, NASW and public child welfare agencies (Briar-
Lawson, 2012) 

 . 



Briar-Lawson/BUILDING THE SOCIAL WORK WORKFORCE 26 
 

It seemed to me that the skills of social workers among the National Association of 
Public Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA) leaders were also untapped. As I 
served as a member of NAPCWA and its executive committee, it seemed imperative that 
these leaders in child welfare be mobilized to support and facilitate IV-E partnerships. It 
was a moving moment when I asked the NAPCWA executive committee how many of 
them were social workers. To the surprise of many, there was a sizable number. During 
declassification and deprofessionalizaton, the profession itself had been sidelined in its 
leadership of public social services, which seemingly included the suppression of our 
social work identities. Once our social work identities were transparent we could begin to 
further the discussion about partnerships with schools of social work. 

Then I became the Principal Investigator on two national Children’s Bureau grants to 
forge partnerships between state and county agencies and schools of social work. This 
partnership movement began as a substantive problem solving agenda given the crisis and 
child deaths that were headlines around the country. Presentations were made at the 
National Association of Deans and Directors (NADD) and then I was funded to convene 
two national conferences on partnerships. Two publications resulted from these 
conferences (Briar, Hanson, & Harris, 1992; Hooper-Briar & Lawson, 1996). Entities like 
CALSWEC, first funded by the FORD Foundation, emerged as a national model on 
addressing workforce needs in child welfare (and in subsequent years adding mental 
health, aging and related fields of service). What began as an exploratory meeting with a 
leader at the Children’s Bureau to advance the ways in which IV-E could help solve the 
vacancy crisis and build the workforce, has since evolved into an ever deepening 
workforce development agenda in social work. 

Over 130 schools and educational departments of social work across the country now 
draw down about $80 million a year in IV-E funds in support of the preparation of social 
workers for public child welfare (CSWE, 2011). IV-E funds cover student stipends, 
tuition, faculty costs for teaching specialty public child welfare courses, competency 
progress charting, evaluation, and field instruction. It should also be noted that since the 
mid-1970s to the present the Children’s Bureau has funded traineeship grants to schools 
of social work to prepare students for public child welfare and to develop effective 
curricula (Briar-Lawson, 2012). From a financial standpoint, IV-E funds are the 
predominant drivers of explicit workforce development for frontline staff in child 
welfare. 

Protecting IV-E and Deepening the Workforce Development Agenda 

At one time, when congressional threats to IV-E looked ominous, we were able to 
quickly underscore the effectiveness of IV-E funded partnerships with two journal 
publications (also books, Briar-Lawson & Zlotnik, 2003a, 2003b). These culminated in a 
new journal that I was able to help co-found: Public Child Welfare. It seemed to me at the 
time that too many fine evaluation studies of IV-E and public child welfare were not 
being published and another journal was needed to advance the evidence base for 
practice, workforce and organizational development. Moreover, parallel GAO (2003) and 
Annie E. Casey Foundation (2003) related reports emerged arriving at conclusions about 
the need for recruitment and retention innovations in child welfare. These reports and 



ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Spring 2014, 15(1)  27 

studies helped to propel a new kind of grant program at the Children’s Bureau. Furthering 
this work was the systematic review done by Dr. Zlotnik and colleagues with the Institute 
for the Advancement of Social Work Research on Recruitment and Retention (Zlotnik, 
DePanfilis, Daining, & Lane, 2005). 

By 2002 new five year retention and recruitment grants were awarded by the 
Children’s Bureau. These became the foundation for even deeper capacity building in 
workforce development. By 2008, workforce issues became a more visible focus for the 
Children’s Bureau culminating in the development of the National Child Welfare 
Workforce Institute (NCWWI), for which I serve as a co-PI. While just a dream in 1987 
that workforce would become a national focus in child welfare, the Children’s Bureau 
now has made workforce issues a major focus of its work. NCWWI provides 11 
Traineeship grants to schools; Leadership Academies for directors of public and tribal 
child welfare and deans of social work, middle managers, and supervisors; knowledge 
development; developmental evaluation and state level saturation models of 
organizational redesign to build a work culture conducive to effective practice and 
workforce retention. This newly refunded $21 million investment in NCWWI (over a five 
year period) sends a signal nationally and internationally that effective outcomes require 
a well-trained and sustained workforce. As the child welfare milestone graph depicts 
some of the major developments of the past several decades, much work lies ahead.  

Thus, while there are counties in the country that still may not have a trained social 
worker in child welfare and where some workers may only have a high school degree, the 
move toward capacity building and investments in the organizational context for effective 
workforce supports is a major 21st century milestone. This is essential since some social 
work graduates complain that they cannot use their skills or feel alienated in compliance 
driven and sometimes toxic bureaucratic systems. Moreover, while the field still has a 
mixed workforce of social workers and non-social workers, significant progress has been 
made on a renewed workforce development campaign. Personally and professionally, for 
this author, much of my career has been invested in seeing this workforce focus evolve as 
one of the overriding paradigms for child welfare reform. 

Challenges that lie ahead include the ways in which workforce investments can be 
definitively linked to improved outcomes for child welfare families and children. While 
we know that length of stay and reunification are affected by turnover (Flower, 
McDonald, & Sumski, 2005); and have some evidence that IV-E trained social workers 
make better prepared caseworkers than non-IV-E trained practitioners (Leung & Willis, 
2012), closing the research gaps remain another vista for activism for the 21st century. 
Other challenges involve the goodness of fit between well trained social workers and 
work conditions that problematically prize case management over sound clinical practice 
by caseworkers. Work roles of child welfare caseworkers comprise some of the most 
challenging social work jobs known to our profession. Yet the work conditions and 
workplace supports for such challenges are often insufficient, and some might say that 
they feel violated by their work conditions, which are often exacerbated by rule driven 
bureaucracies. Ideally every child welfare worker would be a trained social worker. At 
this time it is estimated that up to 40% of the workforce in public child welfare involves 
trained social workers (Dolan, Casanueva, Smith, & Ringeisen, 2012). Thus, progress has 



Briar-Lawson/BUILDING THE SOCIAL WORK WORKFORCE 28 
 

been made with this workforce development journey through IV-E stipends and funding 
as well as Children’s Bureau Traineeships. 

Training administrators, middle and supervisory managers to be change leaders, a 
goal of NCWWI, will help build some of the necessary or preliminary conditions for 
organizational redesign. NCWWI change projects also involve the use of design teams, 
relying on the talents of frontline and supervisory staff and others to build change from 
the ground up. This may help with retention of staff and re-culturing of the workplace. 

Workforce Issues: Lessons Learned and Adapted to Aging 

It may seem curious that an advocate for child welfare practice and careers would 
emerge as one of the champions and spokespersons for building gerontological social 
work. Yet one of the great challenges facing the profession is the need to advance 
excellence in workforce development across all ages. This “inclusive excellence” agenda 
requires a parallel focus on aging. Often marginalized, like child welfare, from such 
mainstream fields of practice in social work as mental health, or school social work, it 
has been essential that some of the lessons learned from the child welfare workforce 
development campaign be brought to a parallel gerontological social work capacity 
building effort. 

The John A. Hartford Foundation has made this possible, advancing gerontological 
social work as a mission for schools of social work as well as promoting aging and 
intergenerationally focused research, education and university-community partnerships. 
In fact, the John A. Hartford Foundation has invested over $70 million into social work to 
build a gero savvy workforce. Dismal baseline data show the need (Scharlach, Damron-
Rodriguez, Robinson, & Feldman, 2000). The vista for social work leadership in 
community based systems of care in aging, including wrap around services, is very 
bright. That said, like child welfare, it has been important to find a funding stream 
beyond the funds from the John A. Hartford Foundation. 

To that end the John A. Foundation recruited me early on to bring some of the 
workforce development principles and passions involving child welfare to gerontological 
social work. While the foundation has given grants and now is working to build capacity 
through several national centers, the need for a federal funding stream like IV-E seems 
ever pressing if we are to expand social work educational opportunities and also close the 
workforce gap. 

It also seems curious that over $3 billion a year in Medicaid and Medicare funds go 
to medical schools for medical education. One would think that such funds could be also 
used for gerontological social work education. Despite a study of Medicaid funding to 
schools of social work and attempts to bring such funding into stipends for field work in 
gerontology, the growth of Medicaid investments in social work is small (Behrman et al., 
2006). However, given the Affordable Care Act, it may be possible to re-initiate efforts to 
build such educational investments in social work education. Of all fields social work 
probably is the most aligned with Medicaid populations and thus is the most likely to be 
in line for investments that are related to improved outcomes for Medicaid populations. 



ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Spring 2014, 15(1)  29 

Thus, like IV-E, Medicaid remains an important workforce development funding stream, 
but currently relatively untapped. 

Comparing Opportunities for Gerontological Social Workers with Public Child 
Welfare Workers 

The Affordable Care Act focuses on medical and behavioral health care in the 
community for all ages and invites more creative use of peers, community health workers 
and related supports including those for family centered care teams. Thus the role for 
social workers as design leaders in these new community based systems of care will be 
enhanced. Even more, the opportunity for social work as a profession to be aligned with 
quality care, community based support tailored to one’s personal home based needs, 
underscores the image of social work as a profession on the cutting edge of reform and 
new 21st century designs for improved life quality. 

There is a parallel need for social workers to redesign public child welfare 
organizations and, in some cases, systems of care. Both fields of practice (in aging and in 
child welfare) can learn reciprocally about the ways in which “wrap around,” home based 
services are essential to more well supported individual and family well-being. Abuse 
and neglect dynamics are risk factors across the lifespan. Thus the preventive tools and 
resources that ensure support and preempt these risk factors are system and service 
design opportunities for social workers. 

Just as laws such as PL 96-272 moved us away from an over reliance on out of home 
placement and into more family preservation oriented practices so too will the Affordable 
Care Act and Medicaid redesign models ensure more community based systems of care 
and supports. Social workers may develop and implement more tailored care systems to 
lead, organize and build evidence-based family supports with psycho-educational and 
related interventions. 

Social work as a profession depends on workforce supports from IV-E, traineeships 
and related NCWWI supports, and on John A. Hartford Foundation investments. Such 
supports for our workforce help to build innovations replacing unhelpful systems and 
services with more tailored, accountable and family centered strategies.  

Social Work: The Architect and Architecture for Systems Redesigns 

The profession of social work cannot be a design leader for new 21st century systems 
unless the profession has workforce development leadership and supports as its backbone 
for these newly designed programs and services. Thus improved outcomes for the most 
vulnerable require both the leadership of the profession around new service models as 
well as workforces comprised of trained social workers to make innovative practice 
possible. 

The work that lies ahead includes more systematic summits and national work plans 
for developing the workforce. The Social Work Reinvestment Act, still pending before 
Congress, ignites such a planful approach and offers one such blueprint for our 
profession’s future. At the state and local level, advocacy must occur on behalf of social 



Briar-Lawson/BUILDING THE SOCIAL WORK WORKFORCE 30 
 

workers whose debts are high for their schooling and who need investments in their 
education. This is especially pressing for students who come from diverse communities 
and who will return to serve them. In sum, workforce efforts need to increase for the 
profession and the highest-needs communities we serve to ensure a more effective future 
for all. 

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Pelton, L. H. (1991). Beyond permanency planning: Restructuring the public child 
welfare system. Social Work, 36(4), 337-343. 

Piliavin, I., & Gross, A. E. (1977). The effects of separation of services and income 
maintenance on AFDC recipients. Social Service Review, 51, 389-406. 

Scharlach, A., Damron-Rodriguez, J., Robinson, B., & Feldman, R. (2000). Educating 
social workers for an aging society: A vision for the 21st century. Journal of Social 
Work Education, 36(3), 521-538. 

Zlotnik, J. L. (2013). University-agency partnerships to advance child welfare. In K. 
Briar-Lawson, M. McCarthy, & N. Dickinson (Eds.), The Children’s Bureau: 
Shaping a century of child welfare practices, programs and policies (pp. 275-292). 
Washington, DC: NASW Press.  

Zlotnik, J. L., DePanfilis, D., Daining, C., & Lane, M. M. (2005). Factors influencing 
retention of child welfare staff: A systematic review of research. Institute for the 
Advancement of Social Work Research. Washington, DC: NASW Press. 

  



Briar-Lawson/BUILDING THE SOCIAL WORK WORKFORCE 32 
 

Author note 
Address correspondence to: Katharine Briar-Lawson, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School 
of Social Welfare, University at Albany, State University of New York, 1400 
Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222. Email: kbriarlawson@albany.edu  

Katharine Briar-Lawson is Dean and Professor in the School of Social Welfare, 
University at Albany, State University of New York. She is a Co-PI of the 
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute. Among her books (co-authored) 
are Family-Centered Policies & Practices: International Implications (2001), 
and (co-edited) Innovative Practices with Vulnerable Children and Families 
(2001), Evaluation Research in Child Welfare (2003), Charting the Impacts of 
University-Child Welfare Collaboration (2003), Social Work Research (2010), 
Social Work Practice Research (2010), Globalization, Social Justice and the 
Helping Professions (2011) and The Children's Bureau: Shaping a Century of 
Child Welfare Practices, Programs, and Policies (2013). She co-chairs the 
Gerontological Task Force for the National Association of Deans and Directors 
of Schools of Social Work and has served as a past president. 

  



ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Spring 2014, 15(1)  33 

Appendix A 

Child Welfare Workforce Agenda: Selected Milestones 

Mid – late 1980s  National workforce crisis in child welfare 

1987 – 1990  NASW Commission on Families addresses workforce crisis 

1988  
K. Briar-Lawson & J. Zlotnik approach and apprise Children’s Bureau of 
IV-E solution 

1988 – 1990  
NASW fosters workshops and publications on child welfare workforce 
and university-agency solutions; beginning calls for police to replace 
caseworkers in CPS 

1990  
Children’s Bureau promotes IV-E as a partnership and workforce 
development resource with schools of social work/child welfare agencies 

1990 – 1998  
Children’s Bureau funds two national conferences on IV-E partnerships; 
two books published on partnerships 

2000-2005  
Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research with the 
Children’s Bureau facilitate series of national meetings to address 
workforce 

2001 – 2003  IV-E funds threatened in Congress ($80m to schools of social work) 

2002 – 2003  
Two special issues of journals / books published on IV-E impacts and 
benefits 

2002 – 2014  
Numerous conferences, national meetings on workforce issues led by 
NASW, Child Welfare League of America, IV-E Roundtable, 
universities, Children’s Bureau 

2003  
Anne E. Casey Foundation and GAO reports focus on recruitment and 
retention 

2005  
Zlotnik et al. at Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research 
publishes systematic review on factors influencing retention of child 
welfare staff 

2006  New journal created on Public Child Welfare 

2003 – 2008  Children’s Bureau funds 8 recruitment and retention grants 

2008 – 2018  
Children’s Bureau funds (and refunds from 2013-2018) the National 
Child Welfare Workforce Institute