Child welfare professionals are susceptible to burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Burnout is a state of physical, mental, and/or emotional exhaustion caused by excessive or prolonged stress. Secondary traumatic stress can occur when a professional experiences high stress or symptoms of trauma when working with people who have experienced trauma. Social services agencies are recognizing how important it is for their employees to focus on self-care, especially with the increasing rates of turnover in the workforce. Use these resources to explore guidance, research, and training on how child welfare professionals can focus on self-care to address burnout and secondary traumatic stress.
2021 Top 10 Self-Care Resources (PDF - 225 KB)
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (2021)
Offers self-care resources that child welfare professionals can use to manage stress and prevent burnout.
Caregivers Guide to Well-Being (PDF - 4,884 KB)
Alia (2021)
Offers techniques that child welfare professionals can use to focus on their well-being, reverse burnout, and decrease the secondary traumatic stress that comes from being a caregiver.
Identifying Compassion Satisfaction, Burnout, and Traumatic Stress in Children’s Advocacy Centers
Letson, Davis, Sherfield, Beer, Phillips, & Wolf (2020)
Child Abuse & Neglect, 110(3)
Shares the results of a study that aimed to measure burnout and secondary traumatic stress in child welfare professionals to explore their impacts and potential coping mechanisms.
Key Takeaways From Building a Resilient Workforce to Address Trauma and Enhance Well-Being: Supporting Self-Care at the System Level
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (2021)
Presents key takeaways from a discussion on how child welfare organizations can support self-care within the workforce. The brief includes recommended strategies to support self-care.
Professional Quality of Life Measure: ProQOL.org
ProQOL Office of the Center for Victims of Torture
Reviews information on burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue for health-care professionals, social service workers, and others. Tools include the free ProQOL Scale (PDF – 268 KB), which measures the positive and negative effects of helping others and is available in 28 languages.
Professional Wellness
National Association of Social Workers North Carolina Chapter
Provides information and resources to assist and guide professionals in health and well-being.
Self-Care Strategies (PDF - 187 KB)
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (2019)
Offers strategies that child welfare workers can use to practice self-care and reduce stress. These include listening to music, yoga, aromatherapy, animal therapy, and others.
Burnout
Burnout Among Forensic Interviewers, How They Cope, and What Agencies Can Do to Help
Fansher, Zedaker, & Brady (2020)
Child Maltreatment, 25(1)
Examines burnout among forensic interviewers to identify predictors of burnout and learn what types of coping mechanisms can help address burnout.
Child Welfare Can Address Burnout (PDF - 582 KB) [Infographic]
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (2019)
Describes predictors of burnout for child welfare workers along with suggestions for ways to address burnout at the individual level and organizational level.
Episode 17: Self-Care and Avoiding Burnout [Podcast]
National Association of Social Workers
Offers a podcast on how child welfare workers can prevent and address burnout.
Healing and Joy: Tools to Address Burnout and Increase Wellness in Tribal Child Welfare [Webinar]
Capacity Building Center for Tribes (2021)
Shares self-care techniques, reflexive breathing, icebreakers, team-building exercises, and online resources for professionals to avoid burnout.
Hope and Resilience as Protective Factors Linked to Lower Burnout Among Child Welfare Workers
Pharris, Munoz, &Hellman (2022)
Children and Youth Services Review, 136(2)
Reviews the results of a study that examined how hope and resilience can help to reduce burnout and turnover in the child welfare workforce.
How Peer Support Can Reduce Burnout and Improve Worker Well-Being (PDF - 146 KB) [Infographic]
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (2022)
Explores how peer support can lower burnout for child welfare workers and presents strategies to cultivate peer support.
Peer Support Program Works to Keep DCS Workers From Burning Out
Pitzl (2018)
Azcentral.com
Examines how peer support networks for child welfare workers can assist with healing from burnout and secondary traumatic stress.
Secondary Traumatic Stress
An Exploration of Child Welfare Caseworkers’ Experience of Secondary Trauma and Strategies for Coping
Rienks (2020)
Child Abuse & Neglect, 110(3)
Explores child welfare workers’ experiences of secondary traumatic stress and the extent to which certain coping strategies may help to prevent and address it.
Impact of Secondary Traumatic Stress on the Child Welfare Workforce [Video]
Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development
Presents a video that features child welfare workers and supervisors discussing how secondary traumatic stress affects the workforce.
Key Takeaways From Building a Resilient Workforce to Address Trauma and Enhance Well-Being: Connecting to Cultural Ways
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (2021)
Reviews takeaways from a discussion with Rita Hart, Tribal child welfare specialist at the Capacity Building Center for Tribes. The discussion focused on connecting to cultural ways within the workforce and using culture as self-care to address traumatic stress and enhance well-being.
Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) – Its Impact on the Child Welfare Workforce and Strategies for Agencies to Address It
Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (2021)
Explains symptoms of secondary traumatic stress and what the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development is doing in several jurisdictions to help child welfare staff learn to manage it.
A Trauma-Informed Approach to Workforce
National Fund for Workforce Solutions (2021)
Presents a document to help organizations understand toxic stress and the effects of trauma on workers and offers strategies to advance trauma-informed approaches to workforce well-being.
Trauma-Informed Yoga for Child Welfare Professionals [Video]
Crisafi
National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (2021)
Focuses on using research-based, trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness practices to address signs of secondary traumatic stress or nervous system dysregulation caused by stress or burnout.