Commitment to child welfare work: What predicts leaving and staying?

This study describes results related to worker turnover from a longitudinal study of public and private agency child welfare workers in one state. Findings from 460 new workers were examined for reasons respondents took their jobs and chose child welfare work, their commitment to their agencies and to child welfare for two and five years, and the relationship of these variables and demographic variables to whether they were still in their positions at follow-up. Among the findings were that public agency workers endorsed significantly higher levels of commitment on three of the four commitment variables and were significantly more likely to have taken their jobs because of good pay, benefits, and advancement opportunities than private agency workers. In contrast, private agency workers endorsed taking the job because it was the only job available and it was a good first job to take at significantly higher rates than public agency workers. Workers of color endorsed lower levels of commitment on three of the four of commitment variables, although race was not a significant predictor of actually having left the job. Variables that predicted staying on the job were having viewed the state's Realistic Job Preview before taking the job, good supervision, and higher job satisfaction.