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Resilience and Burnout in Child Protection Social Work: Individual and Organisational Themes from a Systematic Literature Review
Open accessAbstract
Child protection social work is acknowledged as a very stressful occupation, with high turnover and poor retention of staff being a major concern. This paper highlights themes that emerged from findings of sixty-five articles that were included as part of a systematic literature review. The review focused on the evaluation of research findings, which considered individual and organisational factors associated with resilience or burnout in child protection social work staff. The results identified a range of individual and organisational themes for staff in child protection social work. Nine themes were identified in total. These are categorised under ‘Individual’ and ‘Organisational’ themes. Themes categorised as individual included personal history of maltreatment, training and preparation for child welfare, coping, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction. Those classified as organisational included workload, social support and supervision, organisational culture and climate, organisational and professional commitment, and job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The range of factors is discussed with recommendations and areas for future research are highlighted.
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“Social work professionals experience high levels of stress and burnout.”
From Examining Potential Psychological Protective and Risk Factors for Stress and Burnout in Social Workers. (2025) · cites this paper as McFadden et al., 2015
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“First, research into the origins of stress in social work confirms that they are, largely, organisational in nature (McFadden et al., 2015).”
From Critical Mindfulness in Social Work: Exploring the Potential of Reflexive Self-Care in the Journey from Student to Social Worker (2022) · cites this paper as McFadden et al., 2015
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Metadata
- Authors
- McFadden, P., Campbell, A., & Taylor, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Ulster (GB)
- Queen's University Belfast (GB)
- Corresponding author
- McFadden, Paula
- Venue
- British Journal of Social Work
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2014-02-26
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1546-1563
- ISSN
- 0045-3102 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-263X
- OpenAlex
- W2138865191
- Cited by
- 499
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 44 · 2025: 69 · 2024: 67 · 2023: 53 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 60 · 2018: 44 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 8
- FWCI
- 14.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- The British Journal of Social Work (publishedVersion)
- Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Social Work Education and Practice
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Stress and Burnout Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Child Welfare and Adoption
- Keywords
- child protection social work, resilience, burnout, occupational stress, employee turnover, employee retention, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, coping, workload, social support, supervision, organizational culture, job satisfaction, professional commitment
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