Dare to Care: Exploring the Relationships between Socio-Moral Climate,Perceived Stress,and Work Engagement in a Social Service Agency

Abstract

Human service professionals working in an interpersonal violence social service agency are at increased risk of experiencing emotional burnout, compassion fatigue, and high levels of stress, which may reduce work engagement, increase turnover, and ultimately negatively affect client outcomes. However, a positive organizational climate has the potential to buffer the negative effects of perceived stress on work engagement. Socio-moral climate is a behavioral-based organizational construct that assumes that workplace practices and procedures can impact employees’ attitudes and behaviors. This exploratory study (N?=?41) investigates the relationships between perceived stress, work engagement, and socio-moral climate in a social service agency serving survivors of interpersonal violence, comparing employees with direct interactions with clients in a shelter to those with indirect contact at a different location. Results of moderation analyses show that socio-moral climate significantly predicts higher work engagement, while perceived stress is negatively associated with work engagement; however, the interaction effect was not significant and there were no differences in perceived stress between both employees. Further research should continue to investigate the role of socio-moral climate on employee work engagement in social service agencies, which could improve the quality of services for their clients.     

就业市场中间人行为分析:基于社会资本视角

本文基于中国综合社会调查数据（CGSS）对劳动力市场上中间人行为进行分析，具体考察影响其分享就业信息、提供就业帮助和最终成功匹配的因素。研究表明，就业信息的分享体现了社会资本的“运作效用论”而非“地位效用论”。社会地位和教育水平较高的中间人并不热衷于信息分享，而就业帮助体现了趋异性交往原则。中间人倾向于向教育水平低于自己的求职者提供实质性的就业帮助。此外，间接关系比单一的强关系或弱关系更能预测人情资源。教育水平较低和有迫切就业需求的劳动者对社会资本依赖较大。与女性相比，男性更依赖关系渠道。企业设立固定金额的推荐奖金可促进员工分享就业信息概率，但不影响成功匹配的概率。     

Job Satisfaction Among Volunteers With Personal Cancer Experience

ABSTRACT

This study explored job satisfaction among 753 cancer-experienced volunteers from hospital, palliative care, and community-based oncology settings in nine provinces across Canada. Based on a conceptual framework including three components of volunteering—antecedents, experiences, and consequences—a mixed-methods design to explore job satisfaction was used. Findings from the quantitative and qualitative inquiries indicated that the level of job satisfaction was high and stress was not reported as a major concern. The four themes related to job satisfaction from the volunteers’ responses included learning, personal growth, challenge, and giving back related to their own experience with cancer. Future research should further investigate the important role of job satisfaction for social service professionals for training, marketing, and recruiting, plus the need to explore supports to sustain oncology volunteers in this most challenging environment.     

Implementation of Active User Principle: Learning from the Czech Social Services Reform

ABSTRACT

The active user principle introduced in Czech social services by the new Act on Social Services (2007) was expected to induce change of the prevalent paternalistic nature of social service provision. This study examines the relationship between clients and social service workers in social service facilities designed for people without shelter. From 2001 to 2008, instrumental case studies were examined from three different shelter facilities using qualitative interviews (with 17 members of staff) and document analysis. The findings indicated that neither the frontline workers nor the managers could always understand how to implement this principle. Response patterns and the effect it had on recipients are examined. These findings imply that such a profound change needs to be supported with proper explanation, professional training, and practical application skills. Directions for further application and future research are suggested.     

Utilizing a Required Documentation Course to Improve the Recording Skills of Undergraduate Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

Baccalaureate social workers respond to documentation and record-keeping demands of regulatory organizations that oversee or fund social service agencies. Learning to accurately document client needs, progress, and service delivery outcomes is important in ensuring that clients are receiving effective services. Despite the importance of documentation skills, many undergraduate social work programs do not provide sufficient curriculum content on client record keeping. The authors report the results of a study that examined changes in baccalaureate social work students’ perceptions of their documentation skills after completing a required documentation course. The sample size included 101 students at pretest and 97 students completing the post-test. Statistically significant findings show students perceived an increase in knowledge in three areas of documentation: 1) formats, 2) content, and 3) writing skills. The authors discuss implications for social work education and practice.     

The Role of Family in Career Choices among Social Workers in China

Abstract

High turnover rate affects social work workforce development in China. Few empirical studies have been conducted to explore the factors that have influences on turnover intention among Chinese social workers. This study used data from China General Survey on Professional Social Workers to examine the influence of job satisfaction and family attitude on social workers’ career choices. The findings reveal that both job satisfaction and family’ attitude toward the profession have significant effects on social workers’ turnover intention. Family’s support or disapproval of the social work profession has moderate effect on the negative correlation between job satisfaction and turnover intention. The findings could be explained by the familyism culture of Chinese society and unique challenges of professional development experienced by social workers in China. Future studies should consider the influence of family to develop a more comprehensive research framework. Management in social service agencies should help family of social workers to learn and embrace the profession to gain their support of choosing social work as career.     

Linking Perceived External Prestige and Intentions to Leave the Organization: The Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction and Affective Commitment

ABSTRACT

The present study examines social workers' beliefs about the prestige that outsiders (e.g., patients, suppliers, competitors, and the public) attribute to their organization and the way these beliefs influence the social workers' commitment to the organization they work for, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions (i.e., intentions to leave the organization). We collected two primary data sets (N = 160 and N = 489, respectively) from social workers in nonprofit social service organizations in Israel in 2001 and 2002. In general, the results show that perceived (construed) external prestige results in higher employee commitment and satisfaction, which, in turn, leads to lower levels of intention to leave the organization. The implications of these findings for research on organizational image and employee commitment are discussed, with particular emphasis on social workers in nonprofit social service organizations.     

Putting the parity into service‐user participation: An integrated model of social justice

Models of service‐user participation have derived from citizenship or consumerist agendas, neither of which has achieved the structural reforms important for the most marginalised social work clients. This article proposes Fraser's model of ‘parity of participation’ as an appropriately multifaceted frame for capturing the social justice aspirations of service‐user participation. A qualitative case study compared the experiences and expectations of people who had used Australian mental health services with a sample who had used Australian homelessness services to examine their expectations of participation at individual and representative levels. The findings reinforce concerns from Fraser's research about the tendency for identity‐based consumerist notions of participation to reify group identity. This leads to tokenistic service‐user involvement strategies that have little impact on participation at a structural level. Fraser's parity of participation is shown to have untested potential to reshape service‐user participation to meet the social justice aspirations of social work clients. Key Practitioner Message: ● Innovative, service‐user driven strategies for collaboration will be those which challenge existing power structures; ● Service users want their contributions to decision making to generate identifiable change in the system of social services; ● The success of service‐user participation strategies might be the extent to which political, economic and cultural opportunities are enhanced.     

Bridge Builders: A Qualitative Study Exploring the Experiences of Former Refugees Working as Caseworkers in the United States

ABSTRACT.

Individuals who come to the United States as refugees and work as resettlement caseworkers offer peer support, modeling, and assistance with integration to newly arriving refugees, despite often having limited training or experience in social service provision. A phenomenological approach was utilized to gain understanding about the experiences of refugee caseworkers. Nine caseworkers who came to the United States as refugees completed in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was used to identify primary themes, including: a) the caseworker's bridge-building role with clients; b) their role in building bridges with others in the community, including the resettlement agency; and c) the caseworkers’ experience as bridge builders, including motivations, perspectives toward their role, and needed supports. Refugee service providers face unique challenges in negotiating boundaries with clients and meeting the expectations of their ethnolinguistic community members. Their strengths in understanding household experiences and in building agency and community understanding highlight their ability to contribute to positive resettlement outcomes. The findings from this study have implications for agencies serving refugees and for other social services that utilize peer-support strategies, particularly in regards to staff training and support. Findings highlight the need for research examining effective resettlement strategies and the perspectives of refugees toward resettlement approaches.     

An Evaluation of a Multifaceted Prenatal Program Serving a Diverse Inner-City Population

ABSTRACT

A multifaceted prenatal program incorporating social service and educational components as well as medical care has been operating in Cleveland, Ohio since 1966. We evaluate this program's effect on reducing infant mortality with data from linked birth, infant death and program files for 1985–87 resident birth cohorts. Adjusted for level of risk, participation in the prenatal program was associated with improved survival of newborns among African-Americans and possibly also Hispanics. However, Non-Hispanic White clients, some of whom may have been of Appalachian background, had an excessively high rate of postneonatal mortality. We discuss several hypotheses which might account for these findings.     

Importance Counts: The Role of Relative Importance of Service Elements in Client Satisfaction Measures

ABSTRACT

It is not uncommon for social work service providers, researchers, and evaluators to develop measures to obtain client satisfaction data relevant to their particular service settings. These measures are often constructed through a set of (usually Likert-type) satisfaction rating response items for each of the service elements relevant to their settings. Scores from these multiple items are then either summed or averaged to produce global satisfaction scores. By summing or averaging satisfaction scores across all items, one implicitly assumes that all survey items that represent various service elements carry equal weight. This assumption of equal weight is somewhat counterintuitive because individual clients may perceive certain survey items or service elements to be more important, or carry more weight, than others. Analyzing data from interviews with 112 clients of an elderly case management service agency in a large city in the Midwest region of the United States, this study examined this equal weight assumption in an elderly case management service setting. Results indicated that not all service elements were considered equally important, which called into question the common practice of summing or averaging satisfaction scores of various service elements to represent global client satisfaction.     

A Qualitative Exploratory Study on the Service Delivery System for the New Long-Term Care Insurance System in Korea

ABSTRACT

To cope with the rapid growth in its aging population, the Korean government introduced a new social long-term care insurance (LTCI) system for elderly people beginning in July 2008. This study aims to understand how National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC) staff and home-visiting service providers experienced and evaluated the new service delivery system. A total of 26 semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with NHIC staff primarily responsible for the functional assessment of the elderly and the home-visiting service providers responsible for providing direct services to elderly clients. In summary, interviewees had negative experiences with the new service delivery system such as difficulties in carrying out their roles. The findings suggest that Korea's new LTCI service delivery system faces challenges and that a more active role for the Korean government, especially regarding the introduction of a proper care management system, is needed to address the issues. Future research with larger sample sizes is needed to examine and understand the issues in detail.     

‘We’re Civil Servants’: The Status of Trauma-Informed Care in the Community

ABSTRACT

Trauma-informed care (TIC) in social service organizations means that the organizations operate with the understanding that everyone involved has possibly experienced trauma in their lifetime. This qualitative study examined local service organizations’ usage of the 5 main principles of TIC: safety, trustworthiness, collaboration, empowerment, and choice (as developed by Fallot & Harris, 2006). Ten focus groups (n = 69) and 6 individual interviews (n = 6) with employees from administration through management were interviewed such that almost all facets of each agency were represented. The participants were asked about their agencies’ policies and practices for utilizing the 5 principles of TIC. The results suggest that the vast majority of organizations in this study implemented many of the principles of TIC with clients, though they had not labeled their practices as “trauma-informed.” However, although clients were receiving TIC, some of the principles were neglected as they pertain to staff, such as choice and empowerment. The findings of this study suggest that agencies are unaware of the relevance of TIC as it relates to staff. It is recommended that future research examine whether the use of TIC in agencies prevents “burnout,” high turnover rates, and vicarious traumatization of staff.     

Social workers' perceptions of their power and service outcomes

While social workers are becoming increasingly interested in methods of client empowerment, little attention has yet focused on the links between workers' own power and the services they provide to clients. The authors examine the link between workers' perceptions of their power on the job and perceived service outcomes. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted on survey responses from 591 direct practice social workers in Israel. Results indicate that power perceptions are significantly associated with an array of perceived service outcomes. These findings highlight the relevance of self-efficacy and control theory in understanding social workers' efforts toward effective service delivery. Further, they underscore a need to consider more carefully direct practitioners' own power concerns as they increasingly consider empowerment of their clients.     

A Client Satisfaction Measure of Homecare Services for Older Adults

Client satisfaction can be used as an indicator for service quality. Without concrete feedback from clients, however, the usefulness of client satisfaction data for service improvement can be limited. This study described the development of a client satisfaction measure that can be used to provide concrete feedback for service providers. Based on a conceptual framework proposed in the literature, the Client Satisfaction: Home Care (CSAT-HC) uses a client-centered perspective to measure client satisfaction for homecare services for older adults. A survey of 200 older adults receiving homecare services provided by a social service agency in a large U.S. Midwest city was conducted to assess the psychometric properties of CSAT-HC. Results based on the 156 completed surveys show that CSAT-HC has good validity (correlation r = .62 with a popular client satisfaction measure) and test-retest reliability (r = .75). These results indicate that CSAT-HC is a valid and reliable client satisfaction measure; and therefore, providers of homecare services for older adults can use CSAT-HC to obtain client feedback for quality assurance or program evaluation purpose. Future research may use CSAT-HC to explore the potential influences of quality of homecare services on the well-being of older adult clients.     

Six-Month Follow-Up Changes for TANF-Eligible Clients Involved in Kentucky's Targeted Assessment Program

ABSTRACT

Welfare reform has been successful in helping clients achieve self-sufficiency. However, some individuals experience problems associated with basic needs, physical health, mental health, substance abuse, and intimate partner violence (IPV) that can impede transitioning from welfare to work and/or interfere with parental responsibilities. The Targeted Assessment Program (TAP) was created more than a decade ago to identify and address these problems and help clients move off the welfare rolls in Kentucky. Self-reported interview data were used to examine changes and effect sizes between baseline assessment and 6-month follow-up from a sample (n = 322) of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families-eligible clients participating in Kentucky's TAP. Using McNemar's test for correlated proportions, paired-sample t-tests, and measures of effect size, significant changes with varied effect sizes were found for selected basic needs, as well as physical health, mental health, substance use, and IPV barriers. Findings suggest that social service practitioners could incorporate strengths-based case management and motivational interviewing into their practice. Further research is suggested utilizing longitudinal and controlled studies on evidence-based practice that address pretreatment and assessment strategies involving case management and motivational interviewing.     

Support in the Workplace: Buffering the Deleterious Effects of Work–Family Conflict on Child Welfare Workers’ Well-Being and Job Burnout

ABSTRACT

We examined the impact of work–family conflict (WFC) on worker well-being and job burnout, as well as the role of social support in the workplace as a potential buffer against the influence of WFC. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses in a cross-sectional sample of 361 public child welfare workers indicate that WFC was related to reduced well-being and increased job burnout, whereas supervisory support moderated the relationship between WFC and well-being. Findings from this study hold implications to workforce management practices aimed at improving worker well-being in human service and child welfare organizations. Human resource management policies designed to manage worker schedules should aim to facilitate workers’ ability to meet work and family demands through programs such as flexible work schedules and telecommuting. Recommendations for future research on WFC and worker well-being are discussed.     

The Transformed Political World of Older Boomers

Abstract

This article describes Vital Involvement Practice, a strength-based approach to clinical practice with elders, including those who are extremely frail. Using this approach, practitioners have been able to help elders increase later-life vitality and associated positive quality of life through: (1) systematic identification of individual strengths and assets (found both in the person and in the surrounding environment), and (2) consideration of these strengths alongside the individual and environmental deficits that are the subject of most geriatric practice. The approach utilizes original data-gathering tools (Occupational Profile; Life Strengths Interview Guide) and a stepwise, work-sheet-structured consideration of these data in order to formulate action strategies for achieving client goals (Domain Scan; Domain Goals; Life Plan/Strategy). All elements of VIP emerged in pilot work with gerontological practitioners and their elder clients in such settings as: primary health care; government social service; subsidized senior housing; private clinical practice; community recreation. Limitations, implications, and promise are noted, with respect to practice and research.     

Gerontological Social Workers' Perceived Efficacy for Influencing Client Outcomes

Using a sample of practitioners (n = 269) from the 2004 National Study of Licensed Social Workers, this article employs a quality assurance structure–process–outcome model to examine factors at the practitioner, workplace, and service delivery levels that influence the perceived efficacy of licensed gerontological social workers to affect client outcomes in the context of a highly challenging health care environment. A regression model accounted for 33.9% of the variance (adjusted R ² = .291) in perceived efficacy with 3 aspects of service delivery satisfaction having significant effects: ability to address complex/chronic care, to influence the design of services, and to help clients navigate the system.