Wednesday, November 9, 2016
10:00am – 11:00am, EST, Washington DC

Effectively planning, developing and supporting the workforce is at the core of meeting the ever-expanding social service needs. Although there are reports and anecdotal success stories of what has worked in strengthening the workforce, research evidence has been widely scattered and not readily accessible to practitioners.

Recognizing the need to gather, organize and share the evidence behind workforce strengthening, the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance has been at work. The Alliance aims to bring together people across its membership, including policy makers, academics, donors and practitioners, to help identify needs for data collection and develop tools and resources that can inform decision-making on social service workforce investments and programming. As an important step toward that goal, The Evidence Base on the Social Service Workforce: Current Knowledge, Gaps and Future Research Direction along with The Evidence Matrix for the Social Service Workforce are a culmination of a process undertaken by the Building Evidence for Social Service Workforce Strengthening Interest Group (BEIG) of the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance. These documents consolidate and review the current state of evidence on strengthening the social service workforce around the world to identify the most critical gaps and priority research needs pertinent to strengthening the workforce.

This webinar will review the outcomes of this process of identifying and analyzing evidence on social service workforce strengthening. We will seek your input on best ways all of us, as workforce advocates, can move forward in strengthening the evidence base. The interactive webinar will address these key questions:
• In what ways can data and evidence inform workforce strengthening initiatives?
• What data and evidence about workforce strengthening have been identified?
• What prioritized research questions have been developed so far and how can these be refined?
• How can these research questions be operationalized?

Speakers:
Jini L. Roby, JD, MSW, MS, Professor, School of Social Work, Brigham Young University
Jini is a former child protection worker and guardian ad litem attorney for abused and neglected children. Since 1998 she has served as professor at Brigham Young University in the USA where she teaches courses on social work theory, practice, and policy particularly at the global level. She has consulted with countries in Asia and the Pacific, Africa and Latin America on building child protection systems, including child protection laws and policies, workforce capacity building, case management, and adoption reform. Jini has published widely on these and other child protection and child welfare topics.

Please use this link to access the webinar from your computer, tablet or phone any time after 9:45am EST on November 9:
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/817170397