As one effort to determine what are effective recruitment and retention strategies that child welfare agencies can implement to address these important problems, the Annie E. Casey Foundation provided support to the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research (IASWR) in collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Social Work’s Center for Families and Institute for Human Services Policy to undertake a systematic review of research and outcomes studies related to recruitment and retention in child welfare. Although there have been numerous literature reviews that report that there are organizational and personal factors that affect recruitment and retention, there has been no systematic review of research studies to more fully examine “what works” in regard to recruitment and retention in child welfare and to illuminate the specific methodology and definitions used to frame those studies. It is hoped that by synthesizing
the results across studies, practitioners, researchers, educators, policy makers, and
administrators in the child welfare field may use lessons learned to take steps to increase the retention of a competent child welfare workforce.