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Levels of stress and anxiety in child and family social work: workers' perceptions of organizational structure, professional support and workplace opportunities in Children's Services in the UK

  • Paraskevi Antonopoulou
    ,
  • Mike Killian
    ,
  • Donald Forrester
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Abstract

Child and family social workers are consistently found to have high levels of stress, and this has often been linked to burnout and retention problems in the profession. Local authorities in the UK have recently been under pressure to reform services, and one focus has been exploring how different organizational structures might reduce stress and increase well-being of workers. This paper presents data on 193 social workers from five local authorities in England. We examine the effects of different ways of organizing Children's Services on workers' wellbeing, with particular focus on the underlying relationship between organizational elements, workplace opportunities,and practitioners' work satisfaction. The primary outcome measure is the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12, Goldberg, 1978), a widely validated measure of stress. This data is presented alongside information exploring aspects of organizational structure and functioning. Results indicated significantly different levels of reported stress and general well-being in practitioners working in different local authorities. Implications for how local authorities might support staff to work productively in the stressful and challenging environment of child and family social work are discussed.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 42-50

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Children and Youth Services Review (Volume 76)

Publication milestones

  • Accepted/In press - 21/02/2017
  • Published - 24/02/2017

Publication status

Published - 24/02/2017

ISSN

0190-7409

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/622783
  • Scopus: 85014138599

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