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The Evidence Base on the Social Service Workforce: Current Knowledge, Gaps and Future Research Direction

Although there is an increasing interest in best practice models regarding planning, developing and supporting the social service workforce, the evidence is scattered and tends to be anecdotal, program-specific or observational in nature. There is a need to organize and better understand what we know and what we don’t know about what workforce strengthening strategies work, what doesn’t work and the impact of workforce strengthening on clients. It is hoped that presenting an assessment of the current evidence base, structured according to relevant questions related to planning, developing and supporting the social service workforce, will help establish a clearer picture of the state of the current evidence, identify evidence gaps and suggest priority research needs.

The summary of available information combined with the insights from experts at the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance working group meeting, held in June 2016, has been combined into an outcomes paper that provides some direction and suggestions for priority research areas to build the evidence base for social service workforce strengthening. We invite your input on these suggestions from the full report and on the evidence matrix by posting a comment here, initiating a discussion on the discussion board (note you must be a member to post comments or discussion topics) or emailing the Alliance.

Author(s): 
Jini Roby, Global Social Service Workforce Alliance
Year of Publication: 
2016
Resource Type: 
Gray literature
Language: 
English
Section: 
Resource Database