Preparing social workers for child welfare practice: lessons from an historical review of the literature.

Spurred on by national and local forces, there are currently an array of strategies underway between social work education programs and public child welfare agencies to educate current and future workers, improve agency working conditions and to develop competency-based education. These partnership efforts are frequently funded by Title IV-E and Title IV-B 426 funds. Although the majority of these efforts began in the last decade, they build on the historic connection between social work and child welfare. This connection had been weakened in the 1980s, but concerns about the need for a competent workforce and new policy and practice challenges have reinvigorated this linkage. This article examines federal support for preparing social workers in child welfare. It includes insights from almost forty years of dialogue between the education and service delivery communities on the struggle to create successful partnerships and the ongoing challenges of preparing social workers for child welfare practice.