Peer support and engagement play critical roles in reducing adverse outcomes in the child welfare workforce, such as burnout and secondary trauma. Reducing such outcomes may have broader impacts on the child welfare workforce. Communities of practice (CoP) and virtual communities of practice (VCoP) are two types of peer communities that help promote peer support, engagement, and needed information, but there is limited literature on their use in child welfare. This article reviews key literature on CoP and VCoP to explore what these communities are, their potential benefits to child welfare systems, and key considerations for successfully implementing them.
Henson et al. (Wed,) studied this question.