Child Welfare Worker Stress, Coping and Wellbeing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Social workers are subject to experience severe work stress. This study was aimed to search the social workers` stress status and their coping strategies. We also looked at the influence of adverse childhood experience (ACEs) both on their stress and copings strategies. Social workers in child welfare from Iowa who had participated in self-care training responded to two surveys, one during training (N = 212) and the other after the training (N = 136). Their working stress (1=very low to 5=very high). 14 coping strategies (active, planning, turning to religion, etc, rated from 1 ="l usually don`t do this at all" to 4 = "l usually do this a lot"), and their ACEs score (0. 1. 2-3. 4 and more) were measured. Descriptive, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression were used to address the research questions above. To the question about general stress level from work (1 = very low to 5 = very high), most participants reported their working stress as either high/very high (61.5%) or moderate (29.8%), and only 8.7% described their work stress as low/very low. Their most- to least-used coping strategies were: alcohol-drug use (96.2%), behavioral disagreement (84.6%), focus on and venting of emotions (68.9%), denial (68.9%), restraint (52.9%), turning to religion (47.1%), mental disengagement (43.3%), seeking social support for emotional reasons (34.6%) or for instrumental reasons (28.8%), positive reinterpretation and growth (29.8%), suppression of competing activities (28.8%), active coping (27.9%), acceptance (26.0%), and planning (13.5%). The participants` ACEs scores were higher compared to the National and Iowa general population averages. We conclude that these social workers show high ACE scores and high stress, and their coping strategies are not very healthy. Child welfare workers may benefit from individual and organizational care and service program.