Child Welfare Field Education for Stipend Students

Abstract

Child welfare agencies often struggle with recruiting and retaining knowledgeable and skilled workers who are equipped to work with vulnerable children and families. The Arkansas Academic Partnership in Public Child Welfare seeks to address this issue through a 440 hour internship program at the state child welfare agency. The intern has the opportunity to receive a stipend in exchange for a commitment to work for the agency at least one year. The majority of the 306 students accepting the stipend have met that commitment (68%), and 184 or 60% have exceeded the one year commitment. Social work students have about a 2% better retention rate than non-social work students. An analysis of the retention of 241 former students who went to work for the agency for any period of time, found that the average tenure was 3.25 years. Further examination of the stipend program through a cost benefit analysis revealed that there was a net benefit to the child welfare agency. Additional analyses of retention in relation to field training suggested a mild negative correlation. Students who perform a child welfare internship, but who do not elect to participate in the stipend program, pursue employment with the state agency at a rate of 12%. Child welfare internships at the undergraduate level appear to be a good method of recruiting new graduates into the field of child welfare.