Nature of Child Welfare Social Work

Social workers in the field of child welfare ensure the safety and well-being of children. While this career field is rewarding, it results in high levels of stress, burnout, and fatigue for workers. To support the challenging needs of child welfare social workers and to enable them to successfully protect children and support their families, an examination of the nature of child welfare social work was conducted. The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of child welfare social work in North Carolina, which was gained through a qualitative transcendental phenomenological study. Twenty-one child welfare social workers were interviewed, and data was coded and analyzed. Findings indicate that social workers go into child welfare to help, heal from ACES, and protect children. Social work was found to be challenging and have impacts on participants' physical and psychological health, and low-quality leadership and organizational support were both reported as aspects of social worker experiences along with major gaps in services for workers after they dealt with traumatic cases. Most social workers reported that engagement in protective factors like self-awareness, mindfulness, and setting boundaries supported them in mitigating the negative impacts of these challenges and that the rewarding aspects of their experiences were client growth and colleague relationships. Findings from this study provide information that can be used by individual social workers and agencies to improve recruitment, retention, and training programs geared towards the needs of individual social workers.