Secondary Traumatic Stress Among Parent Advocates in Child Welfare

Background and Study Purpose:

Parent advocates (PAs) are peers with lived experience who were formerly involved with the child welfare system and who interact with child welfare-involved parents and families to provide varying types of needed supports. Given the fact that all PAs come with a lived experience of child welfare involvement and personal accounts of trauma, they are vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress (STS) while working very closely with the families. Understanding the role of STS among PAs is crucial as it can not only hamper the quality of services provided to families but can also adversely impact advocates.

Given the lack of available research, the purpose of this exploratory study was two-fold: (1) to provide a unique and much-needed glimpse into PAs’ experience with STS; and (2) to identify the coping mechanisms PAs employed to handle such stress.

Methods:

Qualitative data were generated through semi-structured, in-depth, face-to-face interviews with PAs (n=35). The sample consisted of mostly females (91%); 25-66 years old (median age of 46); Black/AA (66%%), Hispanic/Latina (23%%), White (6%), and other (6%). Interview recordings were transcribed and analyzed manually. The author assigned codes to the data to represent meaningful categories; identified major transcript segments relating to primary research questions; engaged in focused coding; developed data matrices to organize findings according to core concepts; and determined patterns, similarities and differences.

Results:

Most respondents admitted that they experienced some self-detected STS as a result of their work. Case severity and the extent of identification with clients were factors that influenced the degree of STS experienced. Given that advocates were often parents themselves, details of severe cases were especially troubling with child sexual abuse, suicide, and homicide named as particularly harrowing topics.

The study identified the formal and informal coping mechanisms that advocates employed to handle STS. Common informal coping strategies included: (a) relying on social support networks outside the workplace (e.g., family and friends); (b) self-care (e.g., meditation, exercise); and (c) compartmentalization of one’s emotions. Formal coping strategies included: (a) peer and supervisory support; (b) respite and tag-teaming; and (c) trainings.

Conclusions and Implications:

The findings of this study suggest several important implications. Given PAs’ heightened risk for experiencing STS, organizational interventions to timely assess, prevent, and address STS should be designed to offer effective coping approaches specific to PAs in child welfare settings. (1) Supervision—It is crucial that supervisors working with PAs are mindful of advocates’ feelings and prior and current experiences, methodically trained to recognize triggers, and able to acknowledge and address them. (2) Ongoing trainings—Ongoing trauma-informed trainings on handling personal feelings and emotions, work-related stress, and the traumatic nature of the job should be offered to encourage resiliency when exposure to traumatic situations happens. (3) Peer network—Institutionalized peer support networks that foster mutual support and promote relationship building could be useful. (4) Institutionalized self-care needs to be established to ensure that such care is routinized and conveyed as an agency expectation.