Understanding how social worker compassion fatigue and years of experience shape custodial decisions |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Social Welfare, Ewha Womans University, 52 Ewhayedae-Gil, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul 120-750, South Korea;2. Department of Social Work, National University of Singapore, 3 Arts Link, Block AS3, 117570, Singapore;1. Department of Surgery, Mount Sinai Medical Center and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA;2. Department of Surgery, Nemours AI DuPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, DE, USA;3. Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA;4. Department of Surgery, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA;5. Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children''s Hospital, Houston, TX, USA;6. Department of Surgery, Children''s Hospital of New Orleans, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, USA;7. Department of Surgery, Children''s Hospital of Atlanta, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA;8. Division of Newborn Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Box 1508, One Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY 10029, USA;1. School of Social Work, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l''Université, Sherbrooke, QC, J1K 2R1;2. Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal, 7401, rue Hochelaga, Montréal, QC H1N 3M5, Canada;3. School of Social Work, McGill University, 3506 University St., Montreal, QC H3A 2A7, Canada |
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| Abstract: | BackgroundCompassion fatigue (i.e., a worker’s diminished ability to empathize with clients) is common among “helping workers” and can result in psychological detachment from clients as a coping mechanism.ObjectiveIn the present research, we explored the relationship between social workers’ compassion fatigue and years of job experience on hypothetical child custody case judgments.Participants and settingIn two separate studies, individuals with experience working with children in child dependency court (predominantly social workers, Study 1: N = 173, Study 2: N = 119) were recruited on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and read a vignette depicting a mother attempting to regain custody.ResultsSupporting hypotheses, compassion fatigue significantly mediated the relationship between increased years of social worker job experience on recommendations that a neglectful mother receive custody, Indirect Effect = .06, CIs [.026, .127] (Study 1). We also found preliminary support for our hypothesized theoretically derived serial path model, in which (a) social worker compassion fatigue predicts anticipated secondary traumatic stress associated with the child neglect case, B = .54, p = .0001; (b) secondary traumatic stress predicts detachment from the neglected child, B = .27, p = .0003; (c) detachment from the child predicts job efficacy cynicism B = .65, p < .0001; and (d) job efficacy cynicism predicts decisions to allocate custody to the neglectful mother, B = .46, p = .005 (Study 2).ConclusionOur research shows that compassion fatigue among social workers may change the lens through which they perceive cases of child abuse. |
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| Keywords: | Child abuse Child neglect Child maltreatment Compassion fatigue Social worker Burnout Secondary traumatic stress |
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