What's the Problem?

In a nutshell, the problem with the child- & youth-service workforce is that it is too small, unstable and poorly trained to do the job it needs to do, in all the venues it needs to do it. Families and children who rely on direct-care workers therefore have trouble accessing the consistent, high-quality services they need.

In March 2003, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report on the challenges confronting the child welfare workforce, a workforce that overlaps and is similar to that of the youth work field. The GAO report emphasizes the connection between a stable, well staffed workforce and positive outcomes for young people. The report documents the need to decrease caseloads, ease administrative burdens, expand and improve youth supervision, and strengthen training: High turnover rates and staffing shortages leave remaining staff with insufficient time to establish relationships with children and families and make the necessary decisions to ensure safe and stable permanent placements. GAO’s analysis of HHS’s state child welfare agency reviews in 27 states corroborated caseworker accounts, showing that large caseloads and worker turnover delay the timeliness of investigations and limit the frequency of worker visits with children, hampering agencies’ attainment of some key federal safety and permanency outcomes.

These findings are echoed in a 2003 Annie E. Casey Foundation publication, The Unsolved Challenge of System Reform: The Condition of the Frontline Human Services Workforce. According to this report, in order to promote positive change for children and families, service providers must have: 1) reasonable workloads that fully utilize workers’ skills; and 2) training and development opportunities on the job. In focus groups conducted by the Southeastern Network of Youth and Family Services (a PYWA partner) with service providers, youth workers and administrators described other obstacles to resolving workforce weaknesses, including funding cuts and geographic distance from colleges and universities that are a source of new recruits. All agencies requested help in securing and training caring adults to support their youth.

Although most youth serving agencies have first-hand experience coping with these workforce problems, many are pessimistic about being able to make any meaningful change to the system. Solutions such as equitable salaries, professional training, and opportunities for advancement are often seen by administrators as unattainable luxuries — wonderful to have, but impossible to fund.

What is often overlooked in this calculation, however, is the very real cost to agencies of high turnover, continual recruitment, and lost expertise. In 2008-2009, the New England Network for Child, Youth and Family Services, a PYWA partner, conducted a study of workforce challenges facing children’s mental health providers in New Hampshire. This study found that, conservatively, "an agency that retains six frontline workers who would otherwise have quit is 'earning' about $15,000 a year — money that could be put toward increasing salaries or improving benefits."