Stress and Secondary Trauma

Several workforce challenges were discussed as opportunities for intervention during the needs assessment  process conducted partnership with the Nebraska Department of Children and Family Services’ (DCFS) to address child welfare workforce turnover.

The Implementation Team

The QIC-WD evaluation was conducted with the support of the Nebraska Division of Child and Family Services to determine if an intervention to Address Work-related Traumatic Stress, known as CFS Strong, was effective in improving workforce and child welfare outcomes.

CFS Strong–Building a Resilient Workforce (known as CFS Strong) was the intervention designed as part of the QIC-WD project to address secondary traumatic stress (STS) among child welfare workers and supervisors in Nebraska’s Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) agency (for more information see the Site Overview). CFS Strong included multiple components:

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is a multi-service agency led by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who is appointed by the Governor.  The CEO oversees six divisions including the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), which is the state’s child welfare agency. The divisions are supported by centralized operations that include Human Resources (HR) & Development. HR has at least one individual with a strong working knowledge of DCFS operations and who is specifically assigned to provide support solely to DCFS.

Each QIC-WD site developed a logic model to serve as a visual representation of their selected intervention. All logic models included four main components: inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes. Collectively, these demonstrate the resources and actions required to implement the program, as well as the associated result or changes anticipated through implementation of the program. The hypothesized relationships are represented by the pathways connecting the listed activities and anticipated outcomes. For more information see Site Overview.