Findings from a longitudinal qualitative study of child protection social workers' retention: Job embeddedness, professional confidence and staying narratives

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dc.contributor.authorBurns, Kenneth
dc.contributor.authorChristie, Alastair
dc.contributor.authorO'Sullivan, Siobhan
dc.contributor.funderDepartment of Children and Youth Affairs, Irelanden
dc.date.accessioned2020-10-12T11:05:48Z
dc.date.available2020-10-12T11:05:48Z
dc.date.issued2019-06-25
dc.date.updated2020-10-12T10:51:41Z
dc.description.abstractThe retention of social workers in child protection and welfare is an ongoing concern in many countries. While our knowledge based on the turnover of child protection and welfare social workers is growing, much less is known about ‘stayers’—those who undertake this work for over 10+ years. This article draws on the data gathered over a decade in Ireland on these social workers. The article addresses three questions: (i) What can we learn from social workers with 10+ years’ experience of child protection and welfare about their retention? (ii) Does job embeddedness theory help explain their choices to stay? (iii) Does the ‘career preference typology’ (Burns, 2011. British Journal of Social Work, 41(3), pp. 520–38) helps to explain social workers’ retention? The main findings are that if you can retain social workers beyond the 5-year point, their retention narrative intensifies, their embeddedness in the organisation and community strengthens and they have a stronger sense of professional confidence as they move out of the early professional stage. A surprising finding of this study was that nearly all of the social workers in this study had a staying narrative that changed little between their interviews a decade apart.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationBurns, K., Christie, A. and O'Sullivan, S. (2019) 'Findings from a longitudinal qualitative study of child protection social workers' retention: Job embeddedness, professional confidence and staying narratives', British Journal of Social Work, 50(5), pp. 1363-1381. doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcz083en
dc.identifier.doi10.1093/bjsw/bcz083en
dc.identifier.eissn1468-263X
dc.identifier.endpage1381en
dc.identifier.issn0045-3102
dc.identifier.issued5en
dc.identifier.journaltitleBritish Journal of Social Worken
dc.identifier.startpage1363en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/10650
dc.identifier.volume50en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherOxford University Pressen
dc.rights© 2019, the Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the the British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in the British Journal of Social Work, following peer review. The version of record Burns, K., Christie, A. and O'Sullivan, S. (2019) 'Findings from a longitudinal qualitative study of child protection social workers' retention: Job embeddedness, professional confidence and staying narratives', British Journal of Social Work, 50(5), pp. 1363-1381, doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcz083] is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcz083en
dc.subjectRetentionen
dc.subjectJob satisfactionen
dc.subjectJob embeddednessen
dc.subjectResilienceen
dc.subjectLongitudinal researchen
dc.subjectChild protection and welfareen
dc.titleFindings from a longitudinal qualitative study of child protection social workers' retention: Job embeddedness, professional confidence and staying narrativesen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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