Session: Occupational Health Phenomena Associated with Providing Services to Traumatized Populations (Society for Social Work and Research 15th Annual Conference: Emerging Horizons for Social Work Research)

The occupational stress of social workers serving traumatized populations has begun to receive significant attention as a workforce issue within human service organizations. Notably, the impact of working with traumatized clients has been examined under several constructs including: compassion fatigue (Figley, 1995), secondary traumatic stress (Figley, 1993; Stamm, 1995), and vicarious trauma (McCann & Pearlman, 1990; Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995). Although not identical in meaning, these concepts are often used interchangeably to describe the “deleterious physical, emotional, and psychological effects on staff as a result of working with clients who have experienced often life-threatening, traumatic events” (White, 2006, p. 342). Social workers in human service organizations work directly with traumatized clients on a daily basis. As such, social workers are at risk of experiencing symptoms related to these occupational health phenomena, potentially limiting quality service delivery to those in need of trauma services and contributing to overall workforce capacity issues.

Licensed clinical social workers deal with an array of challenging cases and highly traumatized populations. Further, licensed clinical social workers operate within a variety of stressful and often unpredictable work environments, including hospitals, residential treatment facilities, crime scenes, and natural disaster sites. Therefore, the very nature of the work can have a significant impact on the emotional well-being and ability of social workers to effectively perform their jobs.

By the same token, social workers who investigate child abuse, and provide services to child abuse victims and their families, work directly with traumatized and resistive clients. Forensic social workers in particular, bear witness to some of the most severe forms of child abuse and trauma, including sexual abuse and witnessed parental homicide. The demands of the forensic interview are often difficult to balance, as the content of the children's stories and the responses of the children during the interview are considerable sources of traumatic stress. Few articles address the training, support, and consequences related to the forensic interviewing professional. Importantly, organizational factors may serve to increase or buffer the impact of this trauma over time (Perron & Hiltz, 2006).

Literature pertaining to secondary trauma, as well as compassion fatigue, emphasizes the importance of social support within the organization (Catherall, 1995; Rosenbloom, Pratt, & Pearlman, 1995). The use of intentional and workplace-encouraged peer support represents both a low-cost preventive intervention to decrease job strain and burnout and a shift in traditional paradigms regarding service delivery settings and supervision.

Authors in this symposium present findings from three complimentary studies which examine the nature and prevalence of these occupational stress phenomena among social workers who provide services to traumatized clients. The first study utilizes a qualitative methodology to examine the phenomenon of vicarious trauma among forensic social workers who conduct interviews with child victims of sexual abuse and other violent crimes. The following two studies utilize mixed methodology to investigate the prevalence and nature of secondary traumatic stress among licensed clinical social workers. Results from each project are presented and implications for the design and implementation of workforce capacity initiatives are discussed.