This
article challenges the commonly held assumption that there is a high level of
occupational turnover of social workers in all child protection and welfare
agencies. By analysing occupational mobility patterns (turnover, retention and
attrition) in five child protection social work teams, the article demonstrates
how occupational mobility is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood
within wider shifts in employment patterns and the gendering of professions. In
this paper we argue that it is important to distinguish between employee
turnover and employee mobility, and that an examination of the posts taken up
after leaving, at least in Ireland, may provide a different perspective on the
narrative of high turnover of workers in this sector. Within the five teams, it
is estimated that there was a turnover rate of 8 percent in 2006 and 11 percent
in 2010, with 72 percent of child protection workers in post at the end of 2005
being retained and still in post at the end of 2010. While this should not lead
to complacency, or a failure to recognise and respond to the stressful nature
of child protection, it does raise questions for employers about how they might
plan for occupational mobility within a stable workforce made up of largely
women, aged between 25 and 35, frequently newly-qualified, who are often the
main carers for children and adults outside the workplace.