Location
LSUHSC - New Orleans
Event Website
https://publichealth.lsuhsc.edu/honorsday/2024/default.aspx
Start Date
2-4-2024 9:00 AM
Description
Background: Burnout among child welfare workers poses significant challenges to workforce well-being and service delivery. This project aims to delve into the factors contributing to burnout within Child Welfare workers, addressing the urgent need for targeted interventions to support employee mental health and job satisfaction.
Description: This project involves expanding upon a survey surrounding DCFS employees’ well-being administered in 2022. It aims to identify targetable drivers of burnout such as workload, support systems, and workplace culture in two different DCFS offices. Data collection will involve standardized burnout surveys, response monitoring, and focus groups to determine similar and dissimilar etiologies of burnout and differences in well-being among two offices.
Accomplishments: Findings will aim to highlight significant correlations between inadequate support, overwhelming workloads, and burnout among DCFS employees, concerns reported in the results of the initial survey. The project aims to identify critical areas for intervention, which would function as the groundwork for future initiatives aimed at improving employee well-being and retention within the organization.
Discussion: This project underscores the crucial role of addressing burnout within social work organizations like DCFS, emphasizing the importance of supporting frontline workers in high-stress environments. By understanding and mitigating burnout, DCFS can enhance workforce resilience and effectiveness, ultimately improving outcomes for the vulnerable populations they serve. In essence, this project aims to increase the trauma-informed practices and culture of the organization to improve the health of employees, thereby improving the outcomes for the children on the child welfare workers’ caseloads. This improvement is obtained through decreased time to permanency for children in foster care; children’s time in foster care is lengthened unnecessarily by social worker attrition rates and is connected to lifelong health morbidities.
Future Steps: Moving forward, ongoing monitoring and evaluation of workplace practices and interventions will be essential to sustainably address burnout within DCFS. Additionally, collaboration with stakeholders and ongoing research efforts will be crucial to identifying and implementing effective strategies to support employee well-being in the long term to establish and maintain a trauma-informed system.
Recommended Citation
Le, Viet; Rinner, Amy; Del-Corral-Winder, Sebastián; and Dickson, Amy, "A Deeper Delve Towards Understanding Burnout Among Child Welfare: A Comparative Analysis" (2024). School of Public Health Delta Omega Honors Day Poster Sessions. 5.
https://digitalscholar.lsuhsc.edu/dohd/2024/2024/5
A Deeper Delve Towards Understanding Burnout Among Child Welfare: A Comparative Analysis
LSUHSC - New Orleans
Background: Burnout among child welfare workers poses significant challenges to workforce well-being and service delivery. This project aims to delve into the factors contributing to burnout within Child Welfare workers, addressing the urgent need for targeted interventions to support employee mental health and job satisfaction.
Description: This project involves expanding upon a survey surrounding DCFS employees’ well-being administered in 2022. It aims to identify targetable drivers of burnout such as workload, support systems, and workplace culture in two different DCFS offices. Data collection will involve standardized burnout surveys, response monitoring, and focus groups to determine similar and dissimilar etiologies of burnout and differences in well-being among two offices.
Accomplishments: Findings will aim to highlight significant correlations between inadequate support, overwhelming workloads, and burnout among DCFS employees, concerns reported in the results of the initial survey. The project aims to identify critical areas for intervention, which would function as the groundwork for future initiatives aimed at improving employee well-being and retention within the organization.
Discussion: This project underscores the crucial role of addressing burnout within social work organizations like DCFS, emphasizing the importance of supporting frontline workers in high-stress environments. By understanding and mitigating burnout, DCFS can enhance workforce resilience and effectiveness, ultimately improving outcomes for the vulnerable populations they serve. In essence, this project aims to increase the trauma-informed practices and culture of the organization to improve the health of employees, thereby improving the outcomes for the children on the child welfare workers’ caseloads. This improvement is obtained through decreased time to permanency for children in foster care; children’s time in foster care is lengthened unnecessarily by social worker attrition rates and is connected to lifelong health morbidities.
Future Steps: Moving forward, ongoing monitoring and evaluation of workplace practices and interventions will be essential to sustainably address burnout within DCFS. Additionally, collaboration with stakeholders and ongoing research efforts will be crucial to identifying and implementing effective strategies to support employee well-being in the long term to establish and maintain a trauma-informed system.
https://digitalscholar.lsuhsc.edu/dohd/2024/2024/5