Increasing child protection workforce retention through promoting a relational-reflective framework for resilience
Background: A deficit-oriented discourse dominates child protection workforce research with worker distress including burnout and vicarious trauma predominating. Recent Australian research challenges this discourse through new understandings of worker resilience, with potential benefits for service quality and workforce retention, warranting consideration of this alternative lens.
Objective: This Australian longitudinal, qualitative study explored child protection worker perceptions and experiences of resilience to inform understandings of worker resilience, and implications for worker functioning and workforce retention.
Participants and setting: Participants were a purposive sample of 24 front-line child protection workers, in seven locations, from the state-based statutory child protection agency in Queensland, Australia.
Methods: Using semi-structured, in-depth interviews, this longitudinal, qualitative study utilised a reflective approach drawing on participant understandings and experiences. The thematic analysis via NVivo utilized theory informed a priori coding as sensitizing concepts, which was further developed through inductive coding drawing meaning from participant data.
Results and conclusion: With resilient workers maintaining effective practice over extended periods, findings highlighted the importance of reflective practice and relationship-based approaches to well-being and retention. Support for these practice approaches through supervision, peer support, and the organization were significant contributors. Participant-identified influences on resilience informed a relational-reflective framework, which recognizes the significance of reflective practice and the relational context to resilience, and how this is experienced. Given the common deficit-oriented discourse of worker distress in child protection, this study and the framework presented have relevance for workers, managers and organizations by reconceptualizing how resilience can be promoted to further workforce retention.
Using Resilience to Reconceptualise Child Protection Workforce Capacity
Current approaches to managing and supporting staff and addressing turnover in child protection predominantly rely on deficit-based models that focus on limitations, shortcomings, and psychopathology. This article explores an alternative approach, drawing on models of resilience, which is an emerging field linked to trauma and adversity. To date, the concept of resilience has seen limited application to staff and employment issues. In child protection, staff typically face a range of adverse and traumatic experiences that have flow-on implications, creating difficulties for staff recruitment and retention and reduced service quality. This article commences with discussion of the multifactorial influences of the troubled state of contemporary child protection systems on staffing problems. Links between these and difficulties with the predominant deficit models are then considered. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance and utility of resilience models in developing alternative approaches to child protection staffing issues.
How do we prepare social work students for the challenges they will meet at the workplace and what can we learn from each other in different countries. Short presentations from Australia, England, Finland, Ireland & Sweden
The extent to which social work education prepares students for the challenges they will meet at the workplace has been discussed with particular concern about turnover and retention in child welfare {Healy, 2009). A common theme in studies where newly qualified social workers are followed from education to work transition, reports early career unpreparedness, especially their knowledge about how to meet with clients in acute crisis and how to handle a demanding work situation has been underlined {Tham & Lynch, 2014; 2017). As working conditions for social workers in many countries are described as demanding, with high turnover rates, recruitment difficulties and where many social workers suffer from burnout and psychological illness, the importance to prepare the students forth is seems important. At the same time, knowledge about how and what social work students are taught about the need to develop coping skills, appears to be limited across and between countries. We know little about a common social work curriculum around 'how to handle emotionally demanding situations' or 'how to recognize burnout and develop resilience habits' and in general, 'how to manage the demands of the job' which seems to be a pedagogical gap.
We invite participants to share their knowledge, experiences and reflections about the situation in their own country making it possible to learn from each other. To improve the preparedness of social workers' and increase the possibility for them to stay at the workplace means an increased quality of the support and help vulnerable clients will receive and is a way to create inclusive practices, increase the students' awareness of human rights, diversity and gender issues. Initially, short presentations from researchers/teachers from Spain, Northern Ireland, Sweden, UK, Finland and Australia will be given followed by small group discussions and a concluding summary in the whole group.
Better or worse? Returning children with complex health needs to their communities
Children who are placed in out-of-home care have experienced abuse and/or neglect and as a result may have a history of trauma, attachment disorders, intellectual disability, poor physical, mental and dental health, self-harming behaviours and/or substance misuse. The philosophical approach to child protection practice gives preference to family reunification to either parents or kin for these children where possible. The significant shortage of foster carers, particularly the shortage of Indigenous foster carers for Indigenous children, combined with the need to prevent another Stolen Generation, has resulted in greater attempts to return these children to their kin. The increased recognition of Indigenous perspectives on health and well-being that involve not just physical health but connection to Country and the environment, connection to family and community, sense of Indigenous identity and culture is also necessitating more than just a medical focus on the needs of these children. However, reunification of Indigenous children often means they are being returned to their kin in rural and remote communities where there are scarce health services. This situation presents many difficulties for kin carers particularly those who are caring for children with a disability and those whose psychosocial adjustment has been detrimentally affected by cumulative harm as a result of further abuse while in care. Many of these children have been previously placed with carers in regional towns where there has been access to specialist health services. It these very services which sometimes object to children being moved to live with kin out of a concern about whether adequate medical follow care will be available. This paper will present two case studies which identify some of the complexities of meeting the health care needs of children returned to kin in rural and remote communities along with some suggestions for how these children's wellbeing can be better monitored.
What is Required of Supervisors for Effective Supervision of Social Work Students Undertaking Field Education in an Australian School Setting?
Rationale: The presence of school social work in government schools varies across Australia. School social work is an innovative pathway for supporting children and young people’s psychosocial wellbeing and educational aspirations and provides a setting for social work field education. However, concerns have been raised regarding the effectiveness of supervision of social work students undertaking field education in Australian schools.
Background: There is evidence of a social work in schools across Australian states and territories, and specifically in New South Wales state schools from the 1970s and a contemporary presence in Victoria and Tasmania. Research to date has focused on the role of social work, with little mention of what is required for effective social work field education supervision in an Australian school setting. A systematic scoping review of the literature revealed only four contemporary sources relating to social work field education supervision in schools. This study develops an understanding of what is required for effective field education supervision in a state school setting in Australia.
Method: This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with six experienced social work field education supervisors in Australian schools. Participants were drawn from three Australian states, and from urban and regional locations. Reflective thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase framework (2006, 2019) revealed three main themes.
Results: Analysis revealed three main themes indicating for effective field education supervision, the following must be considered: (1) the school context, (2) the supervisor’s competence, and (3) supervisory teams in schools are complex.
Discussion: This study demonstrates that the school context for field education is unique and complex, that supervisors allocated to school placements should be experienced, and that there are a myriad of relationships to be navigated and maintained for effective social work student supervision in school-based field placements. Together, these themes highlight a knowledge base and skill set required by supervisors for effective field education supervision in school contexts.
Recommendations: To address the unique supervisory challenges, recommendations are provided for consolidating a knowledge base and skill set focused on school social work field education for current and future field education supervisors.
The "Front Door" to Child Protection-Issues and Innovations
How children and families get access to services and supports is critical to the provision of timely help and protective interventions. In this article, the major findings of the front door policies, processes, and practices used across 25 jurisdictions in developed countries are described and assessed. The use and outcomes of actuarial and consensus-based tools to assess risk of harm are examined, and the systemic limitations of such are explored including the potential for misapplication of the tools. Key issues and trends are identified including the increasing use of practice frameworks used in conjunction with risk assessment tools, the development of culturally safe approaches to practice, and the use of differential response to address relational problems such as service user hostility and referrals to community-based supports. The growing use of public health approaches to prevention was identified along with reform agendas to address the difficult task of building system communication, collaboration, and integration. The need for greater use of community development approaches to mobilize informal support networks for struggling families and communities is proposed. Because there are no “off-the-shelf panaceas” available, the importance of jurisdictions ensuring that system changes are undertaken with consideration of their local context and needs is highlighted by these developments.
A transnational student-led, rural-focussed inquiry: social work educational competency in disaster management
Due to the impact of natural and human-caused disasters, for example, climate change, social workers are increasingly needed at the frontline of disaster management. However, some social workers feel unprepared to respond to the needs of vulnerable communities experiencing a disaster. Alongside this, many rural communities that experience disasters also live with social disadvantages, resulting in added layers of difficulty. In response to a gap in social work curricula, the authors residing in both Ireland and Australia decided to conduct a student-led, rural-focussed co-operative inquiry into the research question: How can social work curricula support emerging social workers in developing their competency for working in disaster-affected rural communities to enable resilience? In addressing this question, we propose that social work education include learning the four phases of disaster management (prevention, preparation, response and recovery) through the lens of social work ethics. We posit that social work students need to graduate with an awareness that disasters can exacerbate the issues of distance and social isolation, especially in rural communities. Further, students interested in rural practice would benefit from the cognizance of the factors that increase community vulnerability and the acquisition of strateg.
'Their Futures Matter' Access System Redesign Triage and Assessment Tools "Accessing help through the front door"
As this is a private report, the abstract has not been made visible.
How do we prepare social work students for the challenges they will meet at the workplace and what can we learn from each other in different countries? Short presentations from Australia, Northern Ireland, Finland and Sweden
This presentation builds on findings from the EASSW Madrid Conference in June 2019 with presentations from Australia, England, Finland, Northern Ireland and Sweden. We will do a short presentation on comparative work from this project, followed by small group discussions and a concluding summary.
The extent social-work education prepares students for the challenges they meet in the workplace has been discussed with concern about turnover and retention in child welfare (Healy, 2009). A common theme in studies where newly qualified social workers are followed from education to work transition, reports early career unpreparedness, especially their knowledge about how to meet with clients in acute crisis and how to handle demanding work situations, has been underlined (Turcotte, 2006). As working conditions for social workers in many countries are described as demanding, with high turnover rates, recruitment difficulties and where many social workers suffer from burnout, this topic requires attention. At the same time, knowledge about how and what social work students are taught about employer responsibilities, coping and resilience strategies, appears to be limited.
This workshop allows a cross country and intercontinental comparison about how we currently address this critical pedagogy in the social-work curriculum. We know little about a common social work curriculum around ‘how to handle emotionally demanding situations’ or ‘how to recognize burnout and develop resilience habits’ and in general, ‘how to manage the demands of the job’ which seems to be a pedagogical gap. We invite participants to share their knowledge, experiences and reflections about the situation in their own country making it possible to learn from each other. To improve the preparedness of social workers’ and increase the possibility for them to stay at the workplace should translate to an increased quality of the support for service users. Primarily, if social worker turnover is improved, consistent relationship between workers and service recipients are maintained."