High turnover, burnout puts local child welfare systems in crisis

Up to a quarter of Ohio’s child welfare caseworkers leave the job each year, a turnover rate that lengthens the time it takes to reunify kids with parents, stretches county budgets and leads to more chaos in the lives of Ohio’s most vulnerable children.

A yet-to-be-published study by the Public Children Services Association of Ohio found that 450 of Ohio’s good-performing, non-retirement age caseworkers — or about 14 percent of all public child welfare caseworkers — left the job between July 1, 2015, and June 30 of this year. Add retirements, promotions and terminations and the number reaches 24 percent.