Guest Editorial—Advancing 21st-Century University–Child Welfare Agency Partnerships

University-agency partnerships have been key to workforce development for public child welfare, private child welfare agencies, and tribal programs. With local, state, federal, and tribal funds, such partnerships have created more alignment between what child welfare systems need and social work education and training. Fostering public agency, private agency, and tribal child welfare workforce development and systems change, these partnerships have been evolving for decades. They have been accelerated with traineeships from the Children’s Bureau beginning in the 1970s and later, in the 1980s, with Title IV-E funds for child welfare training and education. This acceleration has increased in the past decade with the addition of special federal initiatives such as the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute. Such partnerships cannot be taken for granted. They require intentional designs, complete with shared purposes and strategies for attaining them. This involves ongoing reciprocity and continuous evaluation-driven improvements. This also involves skillful and visionary leadership in social work education and in child welfare agency administration. Well-prepared graduates may become the backbone of the agency with leadership and change proficiencies along with effective family and child engagement and capacity-building skills. A poor fit with a graduate from a social work program may lead to retention issues, eroding one of the very goals of the partnership such as the reprofessionalization of the child welfare workforce. This special issue of the Journal of Social Work Education adds to the literature on these partnerships in several ways. First, the evolution is captured in the discussion of tribal and public agency developments. Second, the evaluation collaboration that has emerged from training and educational partnerships offers some diverse perspectives on the kinds of partnership models that might further enhance positive outcomes for children and families. Finally, the data-driven nature of workforce development is depicted as a cornerstone of continuous quality improvement. These partnership descriptions feature social work education’s innovations and outreach and agency commitment and imagination to craft these productive professional relationships. Leaders of child welfare systems work toward improvements in outcomes for children with the triple aims of child safety, permanency and well-being. To achieve these aims, some child welfare leaders have adopted practice models to guide change in the way in which families and children are served. Others have focused on more culturally competent practice, given the rising racial disparities of those in care. The partnerships that are featured in this special issue reflect some of the innovations in service priorities and systems changes along with workforce development. In addition to the partnerships described in these articles, we want to acknowledge the multiple long-standing and new emerging partnerships across the United States and Canada. They are the outgrowth of years of development in initiatives funded by Title IV-E and traineeships funded by the Children’s Bureau, most recently through the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute. Journal of Social Work Education, 51(Suppl. 2): S149–S152, 2015 Copyright © Council on Social Work Education ISSN: 1043-7797 print / 2163-5811 online DOI: 10.1080/10437797.2015.1074023