Barbara Pierce

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Indiana University-Indianapolis

This study examines the moderating effects of distant leader’s practice of transformational leadership on the relationship between secondary traumatic stress (STS) and burnout among child welfare workers. Caseworkers and supervisors in a Midwest U.S. state (N = 210) rated their regional director’s use of transformational leadership skills using a s...

Objective: Secondary traumatic stress (STS) is documented as a common occupational hazard among child welfare workers. We examined the moderated mediation effects of distributive, procedural, and interpersonal justice on child welfare workers’ STS. Method: We analyzed survey data collected from 1,053 child welfare workers in a Midwestern state in 2...

High exposure to Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) is a significant risk factor for public child welfare workers’ intention to remain employed in child welfare. This study examined whether the negative impact of STS differed according to workers’ job functions by analyzing survey data collected from 1,053 public child welfare workers. STS was negati...

Family Team Conference (FTC) has been suggested as a promising practice model to improve child welfare outcomes. However, there is little understanding of developing an effective workforce to ensure FTC fidelity. Using data involving 891 caseworkers who implemented FTC in a Midwestern state, path analysis showed that both effective training and sup...

There is a growing women's rights advocacy movement in Saudi Arabia—much of which explicitly targets the male guardianship system. In this system, Saudi women are restricted by the male-dominated culture and face obstacles that hold them accountable to their male guardians. Recent changes in this system have become crucially important to women's li...

Family Centered Treatment (FCT) is a home-based, family trauma and family preservation treatment used in the juvenile justice, mental health, and child welfare systems to address trauma and family disruption. The aim of this study was to test the effectiveness of FCT on time to reunification for children in a child welfare system not also involved...

Depression amongst adolescents is a prevalent disorder consisting of heterogeneous emotional and functional symptoms—often involving impairments in social domains such as empathy. Cognitive and affective components of empathy as well as their associated neural networks (default mode network for cognitive empathy and salience network for affective e...

Empathy, the capacity to understand and share others’ emotions, can occur through cognitive and affective components. These components are different conceptually, behaviorally, and in the brain. Neuroimaging task-based research in adolescents and adults document that cognitive empathy associates with the default mode and frontoparietal networks, wh...

Family Team Conference (FTC) has been suggested as a promising practice model to effectively reduce racial disproportionality and disparities in child welfare. However, previous studies have noted ongoing challenges to promoting cultural responsiveness in FTC. This study analysed caseworkers’ survey data (n = 736) to explore the role of racial matc...

In child welfare, the Family Team Conference (FTC) model is designed to develop an individualized case plan to promote children's safety, permanency, and well-being through active parent engagement and community partnerships. However, no consensus has emerged regarding whether FTC is beneficial for families with Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Thi...

Background Experiencing poverty and financial difficulties are significant barriers to outcomes of permanency and placement stability. This is particularly true for children who are in out of home placements. The provision of concrete services is intended to meet concrete needs of families to address this barrier. However, little is known about how...

Purpose This study examined a serial mediation model testing the effects of STS on turnover intention through executive leaders’ use of transformational leadership as perceived by child welfare workers and then organizational commitment while controlling for age, gender, and social work degrees. Method Survey data were collected from 264 child wel...

AVAILABLE FREE THROUGH MAY 8 at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X19308766?dgcid=author Purpose: Youth in the child welfare system experience disproportionate rates of negative sexual health outcomes as well as increased engagement in risky sexual behaviors. This study explored the impact of sociosexualization and sexual...

The high turnover rate among child welfare workers is a constant, well-documented issue. This study aimed to examine how organizational factors, particularly leadership, affect child welfare worker turnover intentions in order to help child welfare agencies establish a practice model that prevents the turnover of qualified workers. In order to do s...

University-community participatory action partnerships can be mutually beneficial. Universities often work alongside communities to establish new and innovative community-based programming and research that are intended to benefit communities from these efforts. However, mistrust has been found to be a major issue in creating and maintaining strong...

A common assumption in public social service organizations is that workload may be positively associated with caseload. However, few empirical studies have examined what specific characteristics of caseload affect caseworkers' workloads in the child welfare system. This study attempts to address this gap by identifying specific individual and regio...

This chapter proposes plans for professional development within an organizational context that is trauma-informed at all levels from working with clients to caring for workers. This context provides a supportive and educational new-worker experience, opportunities for growth over time, supportive and nurturing supervision and mentoring, a culture i...

A Midwestern state’s child welfare agency contracted with a university to evaluate a 5-year Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration Project. As part of the process study, evaluators employed case study analysis to investigate Waiver knowledge and effects as reported by Regional and Executive Managers across 4 years of the demonstration period. Data from 78...

p align="left">Three cohorts of BSW and MSW Title IV-E and NCWWI student scholars (n= 125) were educated using a university-agency developed competency-based curriculum and field placement. In order to determine if this curriculum and field placement would improve perceived competence and attitudes toward child welfare work, pre and post-field plac...

This study draws on a developmental model of supervision to examine the effects of work experience and educational background on supervisory support perceived by child welfare workers. This study showed that the relationship between work experience and perceptions of supervisory support was curvilinear with a U-shaped curve. This study also found t...

Concrete services are goods and services, such as rent, utilities, healthcare, or other tangible services, that are purchased directly by child welfare agencies to help support the short-term needs of a family. Practice wisdom in social work details the importance of meeting basic needs in order for clients to be able to concentrate on completing t...

Various forms of family team meetings have been increasingly employed in child welfare systems to empower families and provide effective individualized services through community partnerships. However, many family team meetings often fail to achieve their intended goals mainly due to ongoing challenges that team members face. Using data from a surv...

In response to disproportionately high rates of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and engagement in sexual risk behaviors, a qualitative pilot study of eight former foster youth was conducted. Semi-structured interviews explored relationships with caregivers, opportunities for sexual health information, and comfort making decisions with c...

This article presents a case study of the renewed partnership between a midwestern public child welfare agency and a midwestern university school of social work. The partnership, which includes educating BSW and MSW students, preparing frontline child welfare case managers, and providing leadership training for supervisors and managers, demonstrate...

Multiple issues that are unique to child welfare social work practice in rural areas markedly affect workforce recruitment and retention, yet little attention is given to the proficiencies needed to equip emerging social workers for this growing area of the field. Curriculum content is needed that provides students with the opportunity to master th...