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Child Welfare and Protection: Understanding the Social Worker’s Role

Schools of Social Work

By Peter Craig

two children smiling and looking up at a teacherWhile child welfare and protection have always been a cornerstone of American social work, the amount of time spent on foster care has often been exaggerated. The public’s impression is that lots of kids from troubled homes basically grow up in foster care, says Dr. Richard Barth, professor, University of Maryland School of Social Work. “But they really don’t. They come in, they go home, they go to live with relatives, some get adopted, some run away, some go into guardianships.’’ On average, children who go into foster care spend only about 10% of their youth in the system, he adds.

Social work students, Barth says, quickly learn that there are frequently better options, starting with trying to improve the home life and strengthen the family. Do they need income assistance, a connection to day care, safer housing? Adds Dr. Chien-Jen Chiang, assistant professor, social work, University of Texas at San Antonio, “A lot of times the families have gotten involved with poverty issues, mental health issues, substance misuse issues. So part of it is to help the families get back to where they were in order to help the children.”

Dr. Chien-Jen Chiang, assistant professor, University of Texas at San Antonio School of Social Work, teaching the Human Behavior and Social Environment class in FebruaryBut if the home environment remains threatening, social workers can help set up options like kinship care, involving other family members; guardianship, where the parents don’t have to give up their parental rights; adoption; or, for kids over 18, independent living. (Pictured Right: Dr. Chien-Jen Chiang, assistant professor, University of Texas at San Antonio School of Social Work, teaching the “Human Behavior and Social Environment” class in February.)


Child Welfare 101

At the University of Maryland, MSW students can learn about all this in the Child Welfare Fellows Program, which includes a practice course on motivational interviewing and practicum placements with partners like the Baltimore City Child Advocacy Center.

The University of Pennsylvania has an MSW specialization in “Child Well-being and Child Welfare,” directed by Dr. Johanna K.P. Greeson, associate professor, School of Social Policy and Practice. Clinical and macro students start with the basics—such as child abuse and its various definitions—together in courses like “Clinical and Macro Child Welfare Practice” and “Integrative Seminar in Child Welfare,” and undertake a treatment-plan case study. They also learn about how social work services are financed through government and private funding. “We don’t often talk about how we pay for services, to be honest,” says Greeson. “So it’s new information for them.”

Yup’ik dance performance at the 2023 Festival of Native Arts in Fairbanks, Alaska At the University of Alaska Anchorage, BSW students can get a certificate in interprofessional child welfare, since upon getting a job in giant, sparsely populated Alaska they may be the only social worker for hundreds of miles around, says Dr. Donna Aguiniga, professor and assistant dean, School of Social Work, “and need to be prepared to take a step into any field of practice.” (Pictured Left: Yup’ik dance performance at the 2023 Festival of Native Arts in Fairbanks, Alaska: With 229 Alaska Native tribes recognized by the U.S. government, social work students studying child welfare at the University of Alaska Anchorage “cannot know everything about all the cultures of Alaska,” says Dr. Donna Aguiniga, School of Social Work professor and assistant dean, “but they can understand historical trauma, and approach practice with cultural humility.” Photo credit: Travel Alaska, Wáats’asdiyei Joe Yates)

Nearly 20% of Alaska’s population is Indigenous, according to the federal Administration for Children & Families, with 229 federally recognized Alaska Native tribes, so BSW and MSW students learn about “the history and policies that impact Alaska Native families, who are disproportionately represented in the state’s child welfare system,” says Aguiniga. “Students cannot know everything about all the cultures of Alaska, but they can understand historical trauma, and approach practice with cultural humility.”


Aging Out and Other Challenges

One increasing area of concern in child welfare is youths who age out of foster care (often at 21 now) with no place to go. Penn’s Greeson calls this a failure of the system since a permanent resolution, such as adoption or guardianship, should have been found. Fixes have included extending foster care from age 18 to age 21, as many states have done, but Greeson also champions strengthening adult connections outside the family. She’s developed a 12-week intervention called “Caring Adults Are Everywhere,” in which youths who are aging out identify an adult who will agree to mentor them and teach them needed life skills like balancing a checkbook.

At the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglects 2024 conference in Uppsala, Sweden - The University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice’s Dr. Johanna Greeson right and Sarah Wasch present two research studies on the Agape Children’s Ministry Kenya program evaluationAt the University of Maryland, PhD candidate Linda-Jeanne M. Mack is currently working on her dissertation, “A Proposed Study to Examine Terminations of Parental Rights (TPR) for Children and Youth in Out-of-Home Placement.” Among other things, she’s investigating the 12% of young people who age out of foster care with the TPR still in place. What are their demographics, and what do the adults involved have to say? (Pictured Left: At the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse & Neglect’s 2024 conference in Uppsala, Sweden: The University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice’s Dr. Johanna Greeson (right) and Sarah Wasch present two research studies on the Agape Children’s Ministry (Kenya) program evaluation.)

But there’s an even larger problem to overcome, according to social work educators. “One of the challenges with our Child Welfare Fellows program,” says the University of Maryland’s Barth, “is the public narrative that child welfare is unfair to Black children and families.” Movements like upEND not only call the child welfare system racist but also claim it’s unreformable and want to abolish it and let the local community handle the child abuse issue.

Greeson says this “abolition” campaign is potentially hindering social work education and further aggravating the workforce crisis. “I worry that students like mine are getting scared away from specializing in child welfare as part of their master’s program because they’re afraid of being called racist.” Yes, Black children do enter foster care at a higher rate than others, she says, but this reflects their greater need for care and protection due to increased social risk and child harm. Until American society’s unresolved legacy of racism is addressed “there’s going to be little headway made within child welfare and protection.”


Social Work and Child Welfare: Range of Research

Child holding adult handIn recent years, an unacceptably high number of adolescents who have gone home following foster care are coming back into the system, and Dr. Richard Barth, professor, University of Maryland School of Social Work, is trying to find out why. He has been analyzing a database assembled by colleagues from Washington University of some 50,000 youths who have returned to foster care. “Was the child struggling mentally and acting out? Was it the parent who was neglecting the care, or had gotten incarcerated, or had abandoned the child? Was it child abuse, sexual abuse? Or a combination?”

The University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Johanna K.P. Greeson, associate professor, School of Social Policy & Practice, is collaborating on a project called “Life Cut Short” with project leads at Penn State University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the American Enterprise Institute. It’s an effort to document all the children in the U.S. who have died from parental maltreatment since 2022.

Researchers will be able to search by state and find state-released fatality reports and media reports (unlike the federal National Child Abuse and Neglect data system), she says. “Was a firearm involved? Was it domestic violence related? Was there substance use?”

Such innovative studies are key to mitigating the difficult problems tied to child welfare and protection, according to educators and researchers.

“Research is an essential complement to the practice, as well as to the ethics, of social work, and fundamental to the profession’s improvement and sustainment, in particular when it comes to issues of child welfare, child well-being and child protection,” says Dr. Bowen McBeath, professor, School of Social Work, Portland State University, “One thing we’ll need in the future is more qualitative and quantitative research on issues of equity, access and service delivery.”

Following are samples of related research articles:



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