title: Child welfare caseworkers' characteristics and their attitudes toward non-custodial fathers.
abstract: Despite increased attention to the caseworker's role in the successful engagement of fathers and in producing successful child welfare outcomes more generally, little is known about child welfare caseworkers' attitudes toward non-custodial fathers. Using generalized ordinal logistic regression to analyze attitudes in a sample of child welfare caseworkers from four U.S. states, the present study examines how caseworkers' demographic, education, and employment characteristics affect their attitudes toward non-custodial fathers. Race/ethnicity and employment characteristics predicted differences in opinion on whether fathers want to be involved, increase children's well-being, need help parenting, and whether involving fathers is troublesome and complicated. Results suggest that caseworkers' backgrounds serve as inputs into their approach to fathers and indicate a need for further study of the relationship between caseworkers' characteristics and attitudes, and how these might influence case outcomes.
authors.affiliation: University of Florida, Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, 3219 Turlington Hall, P.O. Box 117330, Gainesville, FL 32611-7330, USA.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Arroyo
authors.affiliation: University of Florida, Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, 3219 Turlington Hall, P.O. Box 117330, Gainesville, FL 32611-7330, USA.
authors.forename: Chuck W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Peek
mesh_terms: D001130:Arizona; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002648:Child; D002669:Child Welfare; D005220:Fathers; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008404:Massachusetts; D008910:Minnesota; D012947:Social Work; D000068217:Social Workers / Q000523:psychology*; D013714:Tennessee; D014481:United States
keywords: Attitudes; Decision-making; Father engagement; Non-custodial fathers; Race/ethnicity