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This purpose of this article is to describe results from a quasi-experimental study investigating the effects of an intervention designed to address organizational causes of turnover in public child welfare. Much of the previous research in this area has used proxy measures for turnover while the current study measures both worker intent to leave and actual turnover rates. This study adds to the knowledge base by (1) describing an organizational intervention aimed at addressing the organizational causes of turnover; (2) analyzing quantitative changes in actual turnover rates as well as organizational factors; and (3) analyzing supplemental qualitative data to provide a deeper understanding of the organizational changes that occurred through the course of the intervention.

This study investigated the job categories full-time social workers occupy in 20 international nongovernment organizations (NGOs). Social workers holding BSW or higher degrees account for 95 percent of the program director and coordinator positions, indicating that now there may be greater use of these professionals. But non-social workers filled 83 percent of the direct services positions. Also disconcerting was the small representation of social workers in administration and development. Thus, social workers are used in program coordination, but underused in leadership and services provision. Organizational resources and programs, when linked to larger annual budgets, may indicate an NGO's ability to provide specialized direct services using social work expertise.

This article discusses social work's participation in a new paradigm for health care delivery, disease management. Attempts to improve health care quality havefocused on evidence-based methods of evaluating health care outcomes as well as quality of life issues with which social workers have been traditionally concerned. The fit between social work's ecological perspective and disease management and the needfor social workers to participate as patient case managers on interdisciplinary disease management teams are discussed. Quality and cost benefits can occur when social workers address such issues as adherence, psychosocialfactors, and depression in terms of the patient's global recovery and concurrent enhancement of quality of life. Potential barriers to disease management implementation with social work participation are discussed.