Policy & Practice | Fall 2025

technology speaks

By Jenny Cheng

Rethinking Workforce Development in Human Services: AI-Powered Excellence in Child Welfare Training from Wyoming to New York

H ealth and human services agencies are under increasing pressure to deliver high-quality, evidence-based care while facing short- and long-term challenges, including workforce short ages, high caseloads, low morale, and intense budget scrutiny. Traditional training and quality improve ment (QI) methods—live coaching, manual audits, inconsistent supervi sion—weren’t built for today’s scale, speed, or stakeholder service delivery expectations. However, from Wyoming to Iowa to New York and all across the country, human services leaders are identifying, vetting, and responsibly harnessing AI technology to transform how their teams learn, grow, and deliver care. Here is a practical deep dive into how forward-looking agencies are approaching the challenges and oppor tunities of modern day social work, without sacrificing quality and keeping the human element central to care delivery and mission. The Challenge: Legacy Models Can’t Keep Up Legacy approaches to training and QI rely heavily on time-intensive, manual processes. Team members typically attend one-off trainings, return to complex jobs, and receive little structured feedback. Supervisors often spend hours reviewing a small percentage of the audio or notes from

conversations or role plays to assess whether providers are using skills like Motivational Interviewing (MI) effectively. This model is slow, subjective, and difficult to scale, particularly considering the shortage of avail able supervisors, who are frequently involved in direct casework themselves and have to balance intense workload with their supervisory duties. Unfortunately, most front-line staff are forced to go it alone without consistent feedback, and organiza tional leaders lack crucial visibility

into day-to-day interactions with the families they are entrusted to serve. This invariably creates questions about whether the organization is meeting its statutory and care delivery obligations. At the same time, federal and state guidelines increasingly require proof of fidelity to evidence-based practices in order to unlock critical funding mechanisms through vehicles such as the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA). Without modern tools, tracking that fidelity at scale is almost impossible, putting these vital resources at risk.

Illustration by Chris Campbell

Policy & Practice Fall 2025 42