Understanding, Measuring, and Addressing Work-Related Trauma in the Child Welfare Workforce

Indirect trauma, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma are all terms used to describe the work-related trauma experienced by many child welfare professionals. Articles such as Post traumatic stress symptoms in child welfare workers, EmergingApproaches: Addressing secondary traumatic stress in child welfare, and Soul Crushing. PTSD symptoms showing up in more than half of Children’s Services workers feature stories of caseworkers experiencing sleepless nights, anxiety, and nightmares. Symptoms can vary, but these all are signs of trauma related to the emotionally challenging work done by those in child protective services.

Resources such as the Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit and the Resilience Alliance are available to help child welfare agencies support their workforce, although research is still emerging about the effectiveness of interventions in addressing trauma in the child welfare workplace. A recent brief breaks down the various terms related to indirect trauma, how to measure it, and highlights the meta-analytic research on interventions to address work-related trauma. The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development tested interventions designed to help the workforce recognize and manage secondary traumatic stress (STS) in Nebraska and Ohio. The results were mixed with interventions having a positive impact on STS in Ohio but not in Nebraska. The field continues to look for tools and resources to prevent and address work-related trauma and additional research is needed to better understand what works, when, and with whom.