Elevating Child Welfare Practice

When Charmaine Brittain joined the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW) as a staff member, she recalls, “I was just pinching myself at how excited I was to work at DU, knowing it would be a great place for me, and it was.” It was 2005, and Brittain was among approximately 12 core staff who comprised GSSW’s Butler Institute for Families.

Brittain officially retired this summer from her role as Butler’s senior associate and director of practice innovation following 20 years of service. She was the first Butler staff member to achieve that milestone.

Brittain earned her MSW from GSSW in 1991. Butler founder Cathryn Potter (a GSSW PhD student at the time) was a teaching assistant in one of Brittain’s courses, and they remained in touch. Potter ultimately joined the GSSW faculty, and when she landed Butler’s first contract — to train Colorado’s child welfare workers — she hired Brittain as a consultant to help write their child welfare training curriculum. Brittain had been working as manager of education and professional development for a national child welfare organization, but she eventually joined Butler in a permanent, full-time position.

When current Butler Executive Director Robin Leake announced Brittain’s retirement, she said, “Charmaine has been with Butler since the very beginning, helping to shape our identity and impact in the field of child welfare.” According to Leake, Brittain led and contributed to numerous initiatives that have strengthened child welfare systems nationwide, and her work set the stage “for what has become a long legacy of innovation and excellence in workforce development.”

Among numerous accomplishments, Brittain contributed to the Western Workforce and Mountains and Plains Implementation Centers and helped to guide the work of the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI), where she co-authored the NCWWI Leadership Academy curriculum and developed the widely used Leadership Competency Framework and Toolkit. She also developed and implemented training system assessment tools that have helped jurisdictions nationwide to enhance the quality and effectiveness of their training efforts. Her “Secrets to Amazing Curriculum” workshops have prepared countless organizations to develop effective training programs. Leake noted that Brittain’s published work — including the Oxford University Press books “Child Welfare Supervision” (2009), “Understanding the Medical Diagnosis of Child Maltreatment” (2006), and “Helping in Child Protective Services: A Competency-Based Handbook” (2004) — has become essential reading in child welfare.

Brittain’s work has spanned 35 states. She reflects, “A thing I’m most proud of is that I’ve elevated human service training systems throughout the country.” Ideally, that leads to better staff retention and improved outcomes for those that agencies serve.

Sandi Slappey Brown agrees. She is the assistant division director for operations at the Fairfax County, Virginia, Department of Family Services–Children, Youth and Families Division and first met Brittain at a “Secrets to Amazing Curriculum” workshop. In 2020, she began working with Brittain when her division hired Butler to help transform their child welfare training system. Slappey Brown explains that with almost 300 employees across seven program areas, consistency in staff onboarding was a major challenge. Brittain helped them to identify the core competencies practitioners needed across all program areas and developed an onboarding academy that includes online learning, classroom sessions, learning circles, simulations and transfer of learning activities — all grounded in Fairfax’s practice model.

Slappey Brown says, “Charmaine brings such knowledge and expertise to her work. She’s so gracious and easy to work with: a great partner and collaborator who balanced her expertise and experience with other jurisdictions with the flexibility to adapt it to Fairfax. Our culture is very inclusive and lots of people wanted to give input; she gave people the opportunity to do that. I really appreciated that.” She adds that Brittain “was great at problem-solving when there were bumps, differing perspectives. She was always about keeping our focus on the objectives.”

Brittain reflects, “First and foremost, I’m a social worker, and I bring those values to all of my projects. I like being involved in projects where there’s a why; where the agency is mission driven or value driven. I try to come up with creative ideas that will help agencies do what they do better.”

At this point in her life, Brittain says it’s now time to have more freedom. She intends to hand-select projects to pursue as a consultant, do more work as a certified coach and nature and forest therapy guide, to ski, garden and spend time with family. She says, “I want to make every hour count.”

Finally, Brittain adds, “I want to say how important it’s been to be part of this mission-driven work at Butler. We’ve really helped human services organizations around the country.”