TY - JOUR
T1 - Measuring organizational health in child welfare agencies
AU - Potter, Cathryn C.
AU - Leake, Robin
AU - Longworth-Reed, Laricia
AU - Altschul, Inna
AU - Rienks, Shauna
N1 - Funding Information:
Retention of staff is not the only strategy for ensuring quality casework; many other individual-level and agency-level factors play a role in the healthy functioning of a workforce ( Glisson & Green; 2011; Williams & Glisson, 2013 ). There is a need for continued development of comprehensive measures of organizational functioning that include both individual and organizational level factors and can be used both diagnostically with child welfare systems and to assess change over time in the context of organizational interventions. The measure of organizational functioning described in this article, the Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) was developed to assess individual, work unit, and organizational factors that may influence the quality of child welfare services. The COHA was developed as part of a five-year demonstration project funded by the Children's Bureau to develop and evaluate an organizational intervention in three western child welfare systems.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2016/2/1
Y1 - 2016/2/1
N2 - In recent years, federal funds have been directed toward programs to improve the organizational health and functioning of public and tribal child welfare agencies. This study introduces a battery of instruments aimed at holistic measurement of organizational health factors in public, private, and tribal child welfare agencies. The Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) was designed as part of a federally funded grant to aid development of organizational interventions in child welfare settings. Assessment results are used diagnostically to identify strengths and challenges and to guide the development of targeted systems-change interventions and to track change over time. This study describes the iterative process of developing and testing the measurement tools, including results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The final, revised set of measures includes 20 scales and 3 indices measuring aspects of individual, work unit, and organizational functioning.
AB - In recent years, federal funds have been directed toward programs to improve the organizational health and functioning of public and tribal child welfare agencies. This study introduces a battery of instruments aimed at holistic measurement of organizational health factors in public, private, and tribal child welfare agencies. The Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) was designed as part of a federally funded grant to aid development of organizational interventions in child welfare settings. Assessment results are used diagnostically to identify strengths and challenges and to guide the development of targeted systems-change interventions and to track change over time. This study describes the iterative process of developing and testing the measurement tools, including results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The final, revised set of measures includes 20 scales and 3 indices measuring aspects of individual, work unit, and organizational functioning.
KW - Child welfare
KW - Measurement tools
KW - Organizational health
KW - Psychometrics
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U2 - 10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.11.002
DO - 10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.11.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84949672004
SN - 0190-7409
VL - 61
SP - 31
EP - 39
JO - Children and Youth Services Review
JF - Children and Youth Services Review
ER -