(Posted 2022 November; Updated 2025 January)
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the child welfare industry is struggling. The Child Welfare Information Gateway states that “child welfare agencies continuously face challenges of recruiting, training, and retaining child welfare professionals.”
Child welfare careers can be a hard sell. The work is challenging, and the pay doesn’t always keep pace with jobs in the latest buzzworthy fields like data science, information technology, or cybersecurity.
And like teachers, but more quietly, child welfare workers are having a moment in which many private sector employers are eager to hire them to fill voids left in the wake of the Great Resignation. With skills like critical thinking, facilitation, organization, and problem solving, these experienced practitioners are in high demand.
Labor reports indicate that local and state governments have been contending with an exodus of staff for some time, partly due to retirements. A recent survey by Mission Square Institute indicates that 38% of responding governments have seen public employees accelerating their retirement plans in the aftermath of COVID-19.
Within the Fairfax County Department of Family Services, vacancy rates for child welfare staff have been hovering around 17% overall, with higher vacancy rates for case carrying practitioners. These staff vacancies create a domino effect as employees switch positions within an agency and sometimes this cascades outward into other partner agencies doing similar work.
The forecast is not all doom and gloom. We’ve acknowledged the challenges. Now let’s explore the rewards of working in child welfare, and the 5 reasons to work with us in DFS Children, Youth and Families.
There is nothing quite so impactful as knowing that you have made a difference in the life of a child and in many cases their entire family. Child welfare practitioners step into complex family situations, assess ways that families need to be supported, connect them to resources, help them identify actionable steps to change their lives, and walk alongside families helping them to turn their lives around. We offer parenting education and home visitation programs throughout the community that help build stronger families.
The Department of Family Services is greatly committed to the professional development of staff. The HR Professional Development and Training Team includes dedicated staff and in-house clinical training offerings in support of the clinical licensure requirements and overall professional development of staff seeking to increase their clinical practice capabilities.
It’s no secret that the hours can be long and sometimes unconventional, but DFS allows flexibility in scheduling to help accommodate that. Whether you are single with an active life, juggling family commitments, or a caregiver for an older adult, our policies and practices allow for some alternatives to the standard workweek.
The Children, Youth and Families Division is a community. Our workforce is committed to supporting one another and lifting each other up. The empathy and encouragement that staff experience in the division is unparalleled.
In Fairfax we have adopted a practice model that addresses the past inequities that have complicated the child welfare field, and in some cases eroded public confidence in the work. This approach is team-based, involving several practitioners in the assessment and planning related to each case that comes to the attention of the public child welfare system, so you’ll never feel alone.