The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) has been the national leader in setting best practice standards for child welfare services for close to 100 years. These standards are comprised in a set of 13 Standards of Excellence and supported by the recent National Blueprint for Excellence in Child Welfare (National Blueprint), which has established the overarching framework for the Standards of Excellence and defined the tenets of the organization. With the completion of the National Blueprint, CWLA has begun the process
of updating the set of our 13 Standards of Excellence. To do so, it has begun with the workload/caseload standards that exist for each of the program-specific Standards of Excellence, created and/or last updated in the 1990s. As part of the process of updating the workload/caseload standards, CWLA is informed by the research as well as input from various levels of professionals and administrators in the field. The most asked about component of the CWLA Standards of Excellence are the workload/caseload standards, in particular the ones related to core child welfare services such as child protective services (investigation and ongoing), family foster care, and adoption. While this might be the case, however, the initial feedback from the field tells us that a new framework for determining and speaking about caseload/workload standards is needed. Too much focus currently is placed on the actual caseload standard number without any understanding or appreciation for the complexity of the work and its impact on workers being able to do the work.

CWLA, with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has analyzed the state of the evidence base regarding child welfare caseload and workload measurement and management. CWLA hopes that by broadening the knowledge base and re-envisioning a new framework and methodology through the retooled Standards of Excellence, the standards will help organizations establish acceptable workloads for their staff, calculate the number of workers needed to provide quality services, and achieve improved outcomes for the children and families served.

CWLA collaborated with the University of Louisville Kent School of Social Work to examine and synthesize the literature that serves as a foundation for this work.