Factors of Child Protection Social Workers’ Retention

High turnover rate among child protection workers has been a serious concern in public welfare system. This paper intended to explore what kind of dynamics accounted for the retention child protection workers. Only few studies examined the workers’ retention in the past. However, the findings pointed to a direct relationship between the workers’ retention and their being feeling satisfactory with jobs, strong commitment toward organization by controlling their being empowered.
Taking a quantitative approach, the study surveyed 272 child protection workers from local governments using a structured questionnaire. The response rate was 69.04%. Path analysis was used to examine the dynamic relationship among the key variables. Results indicated that about half of all interviewees have been in the current position for less than 3years. Obviously, the retention rate of the child protection workers is not promising. The study found that these workers’ feeling satisfactory with jobs and having strong commitment toward organization had direct impact on their retention in the current jobs. And, their feeling empowered structurally and psychologically had indirect impact on their intention to stay. Overall, these workers’ feeling empowered structurally and feeling satisfactory with jobs strongly predicted the workers’ retention in the same jobs.
Implications are included in this study from personal, organizational, and policy perspectives.