Child welfare social workers in all parts of Canada report that good practice is often hampered by impediments within their employment settings, and by their own sense of powerlessness to create change in their work environments. In 2000, the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) launched a project entitled "Creating Conditions for Good Practice," which was designed to provide front-line social workers in child welfare with the opportunity to comment on both positives and negatives within their own work environments, and to describe what would need to happen in order to optimize their contribution to the well-being of vulnerable children and families. More than 1,000 social workers across the country participated in the project. This paper reports on what CASW learned from this study, and challenges all parts of the profession to use this information to advocate for more effective ways to serve children and families.