Environmental Correlates of Public Child Welfare Worker Turnover

In the field of child welfare, the research indicates that turnover negatively affects outcomes for the children and families served by the workers. Empirical research documents that individual, organizational, and environmental factors influence worker turnover decisions. Yet, most research only explores individual and organizational level explanations of variations in child welfare worker turnover. To address this gap in the literature, researchers conducted a cross-sectional study to examine how county-level environmental factors are related to public child welfare turnover in California. Analyses included exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and generalized linear models to test for relationships between environmental factors and child welfare worker turnover. Multivariate analyses indicate that the turnover of child welfare social workers in rural areas was two to 600 times greater than in metropolitan counties, holding other variables constant.