September 2021Vol. 22, No. 8Leveraging Key Partnerships to Build a Resilient Workforce
The National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) recently held a webinar on the importance of leveraging key partnerships when building staff resilience. This webinar is part of NCWWI's five-part Building a Resilient Workforce to Address Trauma and Enhance Well-Being webinar series, which addresses how child welfare leaders have supported their workforce in building resiliency during the pandemic.
In this episode, Laurence Nelson, director of training and professional development with the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, discusses the partnerships his agency has leveraged and how these partnerships have worked to improve the resiliency of its workforce.
The webinar also poses the following three questions for participants to discuss in small groups:
- What key partnerships do you currently have in your program that support resilience in your workforce?
- What discussions on racism, either internally or with partners, have supported resilience in your workforce?
- Where do you see opportunities to improve or create new partnerships to build a resilient workforce?
- Ways to strengthen internal partnerships, including cementing the relationship between new-worker training and new-worker mentoring, creating action groups that include all levels of staff to address staff's needs, and improving internal partnerships with the field to make sure new workers are getting what they need at every stage of training
- Building wellness supports for staff, such as sending out weekly "care to connect" or "care and concern" communications, providing staff with emergency assistance programs, and establishing internal agency clubs that can offer wellness incentives
- Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion by hosting peer-group discussions, establishing a multicultural diversity team, and creating an office of equity and engagement (multidisciplinary group)