A national review of child welfare competency models

Child welfare agencies across the United States aim to better the outcomes of children and families. As such, agencies often implement competency models outlining the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for a competent workforce, and that can guide their recruitment, hiring, training, and on-the-job performance. This article features a national review of available child welfare competency models, providing an overall state of the field, common shortcomings of competency models, and next steps to advance workforce development and evaluation. Researchers reviewed the competencies required to be a child welfare caseworker, the extent models covered core child welfare practice, and the differentiation of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Variability, confusion, and lack of clarity among competency models led researchers to conduct the study in two phases. Phase one serves to answer the original questions regarding the state of the field, while phase two asks questions derived from the knowledge gleaned from phase one. Phase two explores whether practice and competency models contain essential components identified as best practice and if the competency models explicitly reflect the practice models. This article primarily reports on phase two of the quantitative findings based on an analysis of practice models, competency models, and their various components. A discussion follows, highlighting possible reasons for the lack of clarity, model variability, and disconnect between practice and competency models. Lastly, the article provides study limitations and the next steps in competency development in the child welfare workforce.