Predictors of post-traumatic distress in child welfare workers: a linear structural equation model

Two important bodies of literature explore the issue of stress in social workers, that investigating the impact of burnout and that investigating the impact of traumatic events. This study integrates these two concepts and tests a hypothesized model for predicting post-traumatic distress in child welfare workers. In this model, individual, incident and organizational factors combined to produce post-traumatic stress distress in child welfare workers. That is. individuals with a Greater sense of control over their lives and a better ability to engage in meaningful relationships with others reported lower levels of distress. In addition, those who had less recent and less frequent exposures reported lower levels of distress. However, the strongest predictor was the organizational environment one aspect of which was ongoing, chronic stressors. It thus appears that critical events in child welfare practice are encountered by individuals whose resources tray already be taxed through coping on an ongoing basis with high levels of challenge and stress, thereby increasing the intensity of trauma reactions. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.