National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment

The growing complexities of child welfare work require the skills of a high-performing and effective workforce that not only has the competencies to do this difficult work, but the resiliency to thrive in a high-pressure agency environment. The National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) is funded by the Children's Bureau to increase child welfare practice effectiveness through workforce systems development, organizational interventions, and change leadership. The data archived here come from the NCWWI Workforce Excellence (WE) initiative. As part of the initiative, child welfare staff from three sites completed a baseline and follow-up Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) to identify critical workforce strengths and challenges. The first site included a county-administered public child welfare system in a large, urban metropolitan area. The other two sites were state-administered public child welfare systems in two Midwestern states. Baseline assessments were completed by 2,832 participants between July, 2014 and July, 2015 and follow-up assessments were completed by 2,912 between November, 2017 and February, 2019. Both assessments were completed by 1,034 participants. The COHA consisted of 335 closed-ended items and covered the following domains: individual level factors (self-efficacy, job satisfaction, intent to stay, secondary trauma, burnout, coping skills, and time pressure), unit-level factors (supervision, professional sharing/support, team cohesion, and shared vision), and organizational factors (psychological climate, leadership, physical environment, inclusivity, readiness for change, public perceptions of child welfare, and community resources).