An Important Question Half-Answered: A Response to Perry's Article

Abstract

Robin E. Perry's article, Do Social Workers Make Better Child Welfare Workers Than Non-Social Workers?, is an important step in studying the relationship between education of child welfare workers and their job performance. In this case, however, workers’ performance was measured by poorly designed performance evaluation tools completed routinely by Florida supervisors and peers. The iterative and labor-intensive process of job analysis, competency development, and performance appraisal validation is not typically done in child welfare nor studied in social work research. Until we can validate and reliably measure the knowledge and skills necessary to perform child welfare work, we cannot answer many questions about the relationship between worker education and performance on the job.

Keywords

social workers child welfare workers performance evaluation child welfare supervisors

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