Abstract
This quantitative research project explores the reasons and solutions for the high rates of direct care staff turnover. Emails were sent out to social service agency supervisors asking for their approval to allow their employees to participate in an online survey about direct care staff turnover. Agencies that agreed to participate were then emailed a script and a consent form with instructions to email both the script and the consent form to their employees. The ten question online survey explored the direct care staff's opinions on topics such as compensation, support and training. Additionally, there was a qualitative question at the end of the survey asking for direct care staff's input as to possible solutions to reduce direct care staff turnover. Twenty-six individuals participated in the survey. Answers were analyzed and entered into SPSS in order to find correlations in the data. Themes were identified amongst the responses to the qualitative question. A majority of the respondents did not feel they received adequate support from their supervisor or adequate compensation for the work that they do. Answers showed that direct care staff who participated in the survey attributed inadequate compensation as the largest contributor to the high rates of direct care staff turnover. The answers revealed no statistically significant data however, some correlations approached statistical significance. Results from this quantitative research project were consistent with pre-existing literature.