Arizona Department of Child Safety—Staff Retention, Recruitment, and Training—Department should continue its efforts to improve staff retention, recruit and hire best fit job applicants, and strengthen staff training

The Department’s agency-wide turnover was 28.7 percent in fiscal year 2017, with turnover for five positions (case aides, caseworkers, program supervisors, program managers, and Office of Child Welfare Investigations investigators) ranging from about 5 percent for program managers to about 35 percent for case aides. The Department has taken various actions to identify and address factors affecting staff retention—including efforts to increase salaries, improve staff training and supervision, reduce staff workload, and implement a peer support program—and it should continue these efforts. In addition, although the positions we reviewed were largely filled as of June 2017, we identified some additional practices for hiring best fit job applicants that could help promote retention, particularly for caseworkers. We also found that the Department should expand its current efforts to strengthen staff training, such as by implementing an annual training requirement and strengthening its monitoring of staff training completion.