measuring stress levels child welfare workers (who cares!)

["john murray" <psychometre@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Can I suggest that she do something a little more interesting and important, 
this topic is exhausted, and because it is natural for people to put their 
best interests first (quite despite a duty of care)done done done done done,

and who gives a stuff- child welfare workers are usually a number of things:

1. university educated
2. adult
3. usually repressented by a union or association
4. able to organise
5. covered by all sorts of legislation, Occupational Health and    Safety - 
anti discrimination blah blah blah etc
6. paid for what they do
7. able to leave the environment that stresses them for up to 16 hours    a 
day
8. very quick to take the provissions of stress or burn out leave
9. able to move on to other arenas when it all gets to much.
10. alledged to be competant
11. allowed to take holidays
12. over pimples and hormonal shifts (alledgedly)

now compare this list to the kids!
I'm sure they'd love some stress/burn out leave, get away from it 18 hours a 
day (oh thats why so many are drug users!) have the oportunity of getting a 
uni edu' (I know this from looking back), be able to organise, and have 
people who are really really actually real;ly are interested in their (the 
kids) best interests to protect them etc etc etc, you know- like a union

don't see too much of this type of research but hell I'm inundated with all 
the crappy surveys about the poor old staff and how hard it is for them. We 
even had one recently in NSW that asked service providers about how good the 
Department of Community Services was at providing family services- not one 
family was asked- not one child was asked, not one person who had been 
through it and lived was asked.

If she still wants to pursue this stuff she can approach :
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http://www.ncoss.org.au/bookshelf/submissions/download/staffsur.pdfWanted: A 
Genuine Partnership
The DOCS Ministerial taskforce has released the results of a 1998 survey of 
DOCS staff. The six top priority issues
     identified by the survey were:
        1.more substitute/respite care places
        2.improve staff retention
        3.staff want to feel more valued by DOCS
        4.better communication
        5.better solutions locally
        6.better equipment and technology.

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http://www.ncoss.org.au/bookshelf/submissions/download/docs_survey.pdf
A report on the survey, conducted by NCOSS, of community based agencies 
providing direct services to Department of Community Services clients.

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http://www.ncoss.org.au/bookshelf/submissions/s-conrev.html
Response to the Consultation Review Discussion Paper

In late 1994, the NSW Department of Community Services adopted, supposedly 
as part of its decision making processes, a Consultation Protocol. Since 
then the community sector has felt that the neither consultation was 
seriously taken up by the department, nor that the department's 
decision-making processes resulted in better services. Now the protocol is 
being reviewed in a climate of cost-cutting and NCOSS has substantial 
concerns. This submission is a response to a departmental discussion paper



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A NEW PUBLICATION FROM ACWA AND UWS NEPEAN-
http://www.acwa.asn.au/acwa/publications/reports/plumber.html

"I Always say I'm a Plumber: Significant factors in job satisfaction, staff 
morale and retention in children's welfare
agencies"

The relationships between the quality of service provision in community 
organisations, the quality of staff training and development and job 
retention, job satisfaction and staff morale and organisational structures 
and cultures remain largely unexplored. This pilot project jointly conducted 
by the Association of Childrens Welfare Agencies (ACWA) and the Designated 
Research Group, Workplace Learning and Organisational Development of the 
University of Western Sydney,
                    Nepean (DRG) aimed to establish some preliminary 
findings of the factors that impact on job satisfaction, staff morale and 
staff retention in child welfare service organisations in the Penrith 
region. Three sites were selected for the study - one government department 
and a large and small non-government organisation.

                    The study provides a wealth of data including 
significant preliminary indications that job satisfaction is strongly linked 
to intrinsic aspects of the work itself; Dissatisfaction with the job is 
strongly linked to organisational constraints; There is a strong link 
between dissatisfaction and policies and practices that are workload driven 
and not client driven; Workers are frustrated and personally demoralised by 
having to make choices about who to provide service to based on resource 
considerations and not on client need; Strong team identification emerged as 
a driving force counterbalancing organisational constraints, and to some 
degree intrinsic aspects of the work itself. All workers draw strength in 
the workplace  from other team members and experience a sense of isolation 
at a personal and organisational level when members of the team are away.




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Print this form, fill it in and send or fax to the address below.

Please send me . . . . . . . . copies of "I Always say I'm a Plumber" @ $15 
ea. (incl P&P).

Name:

Organisation:

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charge to:

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Please make cheques payable to ACWA and return to:

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Cnr Castlereagh & Hay Streets
Sydney 2000
Fax: 02 281 8827

Enquiries to Eric Scott 02 9281 8822 or email eric@acwa.asn.au




From: "\"Richard Carrière et Louise Picard\" @" 
<picard.carriere@sympatico.ca>
Reply-To: picard.carriere@sympatico.ca
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers   
<CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu>
Subject: measuring the stress level of those working in child welfare
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:02:14 -0500

I have a student who is interested in studying the stress level
experienced by child welfare workers. Can anyone suggest standardised
measures of stress that she could use.
Secondly, I suspect that this topic may have been covered in the past.
How do I access the archives of this listserver?

Richard Carrière


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