Team Culture Factors and Child Welfare Professionals' Well‐Being: Association of Psychological Safety, Workplace Connectedness and Mindful Organising With Secondary Traumatic Stress

ABSTRACT More scholarship is needed to explore workplace and systems factors that may protect child welfare professionals from poor well‐being outcomes, including secondary traumatic stress (STS). This study explored whether tenets of a team‐based culture were associated with levels of STS symptoms. This project is a secondary analysis of data collected through a routine quality improvement survey on organizational culture and climate in a statewide public child welfare system ( n = 518). Child welfare professionals with low levels of STS had significantly higher psychological safety and workplace connectedness scores than respondents with moderate levels of STS. Both psychological safety and workplace connectedness predicted STS scores using a cross‐sectional regression analysis. However, mindful organising was not associated with lower STS scores. Child welfare work is often team‐based, and strategies aimed at strengthening teams may have a downstream impact of protecting against STS. Within team culture, psychological safety and workplace connectedness may be uniquely related to STS.