UB, Erie County partnership strengthens local child welfare workforce

By Matthew Biddle

When she enrolled in the Master of Social Work (MSW) program, Wabick was a senior caseworker at Erie County Child Protective Services, investigating allegations of child abuse or neglect.  

“The most significant thing I learned was the importance of acknowledging the trauma involved with Child Protective Services, even as we do the best we can in every situation,” she says. “The program helped me to speak with and empower our clients and to understand how we can be as open and communicative as possible when we’re doing this work.”

Since graduating in 2022, Wabick was named a clinical specialist with the Erie County Department of Social Services (DSS). She says her social work background has greatly improved the quality of her work.

“With the skills I gained through the MSW degree, child welfare becomes a different type of work,” she says. “Now, I am focused on being as transparent as I can with our families, explaining the system and possible outcomes to give our clients an understanding of their choices. I’m focused on minimizing retraumatization as much as possible.”

Wabick was one of more than 20 MSW students who came through the UB School of Social Work as part of a partnership between the school, Erie County DSS and the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI).

In 2019, NCWWI — which was funded by the federal Children’s Bureau — selected the school and DSS for a five-year workforce development grant totaling more than $792,000. The grant, which wrapped up this year, provided tuition and a small stipend for each student to earn their MSW; in exchange, for every year in the program, the student committed to working for a year in child welfare at DSS.

In addition, based on the findings of an organizational health assessment at DSS, the partnership aimed to boost the department’s child welfare workforce by improving recruitment, retention, culture and racial equity.

“Oftentimes, child welfare systems can be fairly closed systems, partly out of necessity to protect client data,” says Annette Semanchin Jones, an associate professor in the School of Social Work and principal investigator on the grant. “I can’t overstate how huge it is in child welfare for a jurisdiction to be open to talking about their needs and willing to engage with a university partner. Erie County was quite remarkable in that sense.”

Jeffrey Mann, MSW ’24, was inspired by Wabick, a close friend, to pursue the UB MSW program. At the time, Mann was a senior case assistant with DSS; before graduating last summer, he earned a promotion to chief case assistant.

“I learned about the need for communication and the importance of listening,” Mann says of his takeaways from the MSW program. “When someone’s in a challenging situation, we think, ‘Let’s help them,’ but we need to think more about how we can empower them so that the change they make is long lasting.”

Many NCWWI scholars, including Wabick and Mann, completed employment-based field placements at DSS as part of their MSW program, allowing them to explore other areas of the organization and child welfare. Wabick worked in several areas across her field experiences, including with a clinical specialist, administration and the Erie County Court Improvement Project. Mann, meanwhile, supported projects related to kinship caregivers and the Family Unification Support Team.

One of Mann’s favorite aspects of his MSW experience was the cohort he gained with his fellow NCWWI scholars at DSS and the support he received from Semanchin Jones and Todd Sage, a clinical associate professor and faculty advisor for all NCWWI scholars.

“We’re all in the same boat: We all work full time in child welfare, go to class part time and have a lot of similar stressors,” Mann says. “The support from Annette and Todd, and from each other, made the biggest difference. If I would have gone back to school without this support, I don’t know how I would have made it through the program.”

In addition to the tuition benefits, NCWWI scholars received other enhanced curricular opportunities, including monthly seminars that allowed the students to discuss child welfare issues, trends and solutions with Sage, Semanchin Jones and others working in the same setting.

“One thing we do well in our school is get people excited about being change agents, but sometimes that smacks up against the bureaucracy of a system,” Sage explains. “A lot of what I did was problem solve with students about how they can use their new skills and become change agents within a system like this.”

Catie Gavin, MSW ’04, is first deputy commissioner of family wellness within DSS — and a strong champion for the NCWWI program within the county. She sees a positive shift in her workforce as more employees earn their MSW and develop the skills and perspectives that come with their degree.

“You can be a caseworker with any four-year degree, but we see a difference in people who have a social work background doing this work,” Gavin explains. “Social workers look at everything that could be impacting a person, whether it be their family, living situation, community or the culture in which they were raised. There are so many factors that affect a person, and social work gives you interventions to use that will impact them long term.”

Beyond training new social workers, the NCWWI partnership focused on staff concerns raised through the initial organizational health assessment.

One component was leadership development for DSS administrators, managers and supervisors, including one-on-one coaching from Sage and other leaders. In addition, action teams — made up of representatives from DSS, NCWWI and the school — met monthly to begin moving the needle on critical issues of workplace culture, retention and racial equity.

“In bureaucracies, change is slow, but the hope of the NCWWI program was to put the infrastructure in place so these organizational change efforts can continue,” says Semanchin Jones.

Gavin says much progress has been made — and is poised to continue. On racial equity, she says: “We know from a practice perspective that minority families are disproportionately represented in our system, but our workforce doesn’t always reflect the families we serve. NCWWI helped us embed racial equity and cultural competency training for child welfare into our practice. It allowed us to begin having some crucial conversations.”

As part of both the MSW students’ experience and the leadership training many DSS staff received, participants completed “change projects” throughout the agency, some of which have become part of the organization’s culture moving forward. Projects included launching a child welfare podcast, supporting a kinship care program and working with local Indigenous communities around Indian Child Welfare Act policies. In addition, DSS has established employee-run support groups for caseworkers, supervisors and MSW students, which will help to sustain the support that Mann appreciated from his NCWWI experience.

Gavin says trust has greatly improved throughout the organization, and that the action teams will continue to operate and connect employees with upper administration.

“The biggest impact from the action teams is that the workforce has the ability to give voice to policy, procedure and what our culture looks like — and that’s what really impacts retention,” she says. “What does it feel like when you’re working for us? Are we allowing self-care opportunities because of the stress of the work?”

For Sage and Semanchin Jones, the partnership is indicative of how the school and its partners can work together to benefit individuals and our community.

“Now, since NCWWI, there’s a lot of work happening between the school and Erie County. My hope is that these relationships will continue to grow into even more robust support for each other,” says Sage.

Semanchin Jones agrees: “As a public university, part of our mission is to engage with the community in ways that are meaningful to them and can leverage the resources, research and education we provide to support their work. This is a quintessential example of how that can look.”  

Matthew Biddle
Director of Communications and Marketing
School of Social Work
Tel: 716-645-1226
mrbiddle@buffalo.edu