Death is the new sex, last great taboo in Western society and Western medicine, as Richard Smith discusses in his editorial (p 129). In the trinity of births, marriages, and deaths, only death does not have glossy magazines devoted to stylish consumption at the attendant ceremonies. On the web, of course, …

Death and dying

This article examines the influence of social networks and value congruence on turnover intention among public and nonprofit employees. We argue that employees exist in social networks inside and outside their organization, and these networks shape employee attitudes and behavior. To illustrate this theory, we use turnover intention. A strong and positive intraorganizational social network characterized by good relations with and a sense of obligation toward other staff is hypothesized to make it more likely that employees will stay. A strong social network external to the organization is hypothesized to increase the opportunities that employees have to leave. Our findings offer strong support for the role of intraorganizational networks, but relatively weak support for the effect of external networks. We also propose that person-organization (P-O) fit shape turnover intention. Our results suggest that employees who experience a strong P-O fit in terms of value congruence are more likely to offer a long-term commitment.

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The Ties that Bind: Social Networks, Person-Organization Value Fit, and Turnover Intention

Child protection social work is acknowledged as a very stressful occupation with high turnover and poor retention of staff being a major concern. This paper highlights themes that emerged from findings of 65 articles that were included as part of a systematic literature review. The review focused on the evaluation of research findings, which considered individual and organizational factors associated with resilience or burnout in child protection social work staff. The results identified a range of individual and organizational themes for staff in child protection social work. Nine themes were identified in total. These are categorised under ‘Individual’ and ‘Organizational’ themes. Themes categorised as individual included, personal history of maltreatment, training and preparation for child welfare, coping, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction. Those classified as organisational included workload, social support and supervision, organizational culture and climate, organizational and professional commitment and job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The range of factors are discussed with recommendations and areas for future research are highlighted.

/pdf/resilience-and-burnout-in-child-protection-social-work-4lmuauegk5.pdf

Resilience and Burnout in Child Protection Social Work: Individual and Organisational Themes from a Systematic Literature Review

Effective supervision is a vital aspect of service delivery in social service organizations. This article provides a meta‐analysis of 27 qualified research articles published between 1990 and 2007. The analysis thus includes a combined sample of 10,867 workers in child welfare, social work, and mental health settings. The results indicate that supervisory dimensions of task assistance, social and emotional support, and supervisory interpersonal interaction are positively and statistically significantly related to beneficial outcomes for workers. The dimensions of social and emotional supervisory support and supervisory interpersonal interaction are found to be negatively and statistically significantly related to detrimental outcomes for workers. All effect sizes were moderate (r at the 0.30 to 0.40 range). These findings underscore the importance of effective supervision in fostering beneficial outcomes and in limiting detrimental outcomes for workers. They also indicate that social service agencies shou...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/599028

The Impact of Supervision on Worker Outcomes: A Meta‐analysis

This article tests a model of turnover intention on a large sample of Texas state employees focusing on four issues. First, the findings support a life cycle stability hypothesis, which suggests that age, experience, and geographic preferences reduce turnover intention, an effect compounded by economic/familial constraints for primary wage earners and members of large households. Second, contrary to previous research, the results show that females are significantly less likely to state an intention to quit. This finding reflects changing patterns of labor force participation, as well as the particular advantages that the public sector offers female employees. Third, the results distinguish between the relative contributions of three overlapping concepts: organizational loyalty, voice, and empowerment. Organizational loyalty and empowerment reduce turnover intention, but voice is not a significant factor. Finally, the article provides a detailed test of different personnel policies, providing particular su...

Explaining Turnover Intention in State Government Examining the Roles of Gender, Life Cycle, and Loyalty

Training, transfer, and turnover: Exploring the relationship among transfer of learning factors and staff retention in child welfare

The Joint Master of Social Work Program of Cleveland State University and The University of Akron was the first MSW program taught entirely via distance education that was fully accredited by the Council of Social Work Education. Over the past nine years, the Joint MSW Program has grown from one cohort of 24 full‐time students to a program with an enrollment of 186 full‐time, part‐time and Advanced Standing students. This innovative Joint MSW Program has required an ongoing process of collaboration, refinement, and flexibility. The purpose of this article is to provide a narrative of the experiences of delivering an entire MSW program via distance education, including obstacles that have been overcome as well as recommendations for other programs considering distance education.

Delivering a Social Work MSW Program through Distance Education: An Innovative Collaboration between Two Universities, USA

SummaryThis qualitative study analyzed the responses of African American women living with an HIV or AIDS diagnosis for 10 years or longer who were participants in an ongoing support group. Ten wom...

Timothy McCarragher

Papers

Training, transfer, and turnover: Exploring the relationship among transfer of learning factors and staff retention in child welfare

Delivering a Social Work MSW Program through Distance Education: An Innovative Collaboration between Two Universities, USA

Struggles and resilience of African American women living with HIV or AIDS: A qualitative study