Jerry Allred believes deeply that child welfare work is a calling. As executive director of the Crosswell Home for Children in Columbia, he sees that same conviction shared among his staff. But Allred also knows from experience that many who enter the field aren’t really prepared for what they’ll face.
“We were seeing that people were coming to us with the heart to do the work, but not necessarily the understanding of how taking care of children from hard places is tough work,” he says.
That was resulting in high turnover, an industry-wide problem. Allred realized new staff, and even some experienced ones, might benefit from some professional development. His team reached out to different organizations for help, and Jodie Martin, director of the Center for Child Advocacy Studies at USC Upstate, responded.
An experienced counselor with an extensive background in child welfare, Martin understood the challenges Allred’s staff faced. She pulled together a group of faculty, staff and outside experts to create a three-part course, consisting of 10 modules each, that was geared toward group home care.
“We hope that with a little background on trauma and all the other things in the modules that (staff) will stay longer,” she says.
The online training served as a pilot for what Martin hopes can be a program utilized by other group homes in the state. While there are other online trainings available for child welfare workers, they tend to be broad and not location-specific, Martin says. The cost can also be prohibitively expensive for nonprofit organizations. The USC Upstate training offers an affordable alternative that can be customized for different parts of the state.
Fifteen of the 16 Crosswell employees who started the training completed it, Allred says. The feedback was positive, with some mentioning the content helped them better understand the needs of children in the foster care system. Those who were new to the field seemed to especially appreciate learning how South Carolina’s child welfare system worked, he says.
Allred and Martin recently shared their findings from the pilot program at an industry conference to help spread the word about the training. Martin says she hopes to keep improving the content by creating more engaging videos and additional resources. She also sees other places where the training could be valuable, such as school districts. Ultimately, she and Allred note, better training results in better care.
