Implications of workforce turnover in child protection social work: The ‘CARERS framework’ conceptualized by the voice of those with lived experience

Social work functions as a population level safeguarding system, intervening in situations of risk, neglect, and harm, particularly within children and families’ services. However, persistent workforce instability, including high levels of social worker turnover continues to undermine service continuity, relationship-based practice, and safeguarding capacity. While the organisational consequences of turnover are well documented, less is known about how these disruptions are experienced by service-users. This qualitative study centres the voices of care leavers, parents, and foster parents, alongside advocacy groups, to examine how social worker turnover is experienced in everyday practice. Drawing on 18 in-depth interviews and 3 focus groups, the analysis introduces the CARERS framework, a thematic acronym capturing 6 inter-connected domains. Findings show that workforce instability was experienced as a relational and emotional loss and service disruption that fractures trust, delays decision-making, interrupts life-story work, and shifts risk onto families and third-sector organisations. Subsequently, turnover emerges as a safeguarding concern rather than a single workforce issue. This paper argues that a systems level perspective is needed to centre experiences of service recipients which needs to be the focal point for systemic impact of workforce turnover. The absence of service-user perspectives within turnover research reinforces existing structural inequalities and epistemic injustice faced by children and families. By foregrounding lived experience, the CARERS framework offers a relational lens for understanding how staffing instability reshapes care, protection, and trust in children’s social work.