The recruitment industry has a saying: “you can train a hen to crow but it is probably easier to hire a rooster”. Perhaps this is also applicable to the adoption of self-care practices and reduction of burnout experienced by OoHC/YJ workers, i.e. perhaps we should recruit people who already undergo self-care practices or are resilient to burnout. The results The…
Today’s post continues the series on the causes of job burnout and turnover of staff in OoHC and YJ roles. The last post reviewed the impact of trauma informed self-care on burnout. This study1 looks at the impact of job demands on burnout. As with previous posts, this study reviews the causes of burnout in child welfare workers in the…
I am at the 3rd International Childhood International Trauma Conference in Melbourne. The conference brings together international leaders in the field of trauma and trauma recovery. The aim is to distill information that might be relevant to Practitioners be they foster carers, resi-worker workers, case managers or JJ workers etc. A big task! The conference runs for five and half…
Introduction Previous posts have noted the importance of education in providing young people in OoHC and YJ with a pathway out of the consequences of trauma and poverty (see here, here and here). The problem is getting these young people to attend school. Given that education is such a pivotal gateway to a better life, I am willing to consider…
The Victorian Ombudsman (VO) report[1] into school expulsions ignores the elephant in the room, namely whether violence is increasing in our schools and, if so, is it the cause of an increase in expulsions. Background to the report The VO report has narrow Terms of Reference (TOR), namely to audit the Dept. of Education and Training’s (DET) compliance to the…
High staff turnover has been a concern in the child protection and youth justice systems for many decades. A recent US study attempted to identify the causal factors that lead to high staff turnover amongst child welfare staff in the US. The study is of interest not so much because its findings but rather because of the excellent summary it…
Absconding from placements increases risk of contact with correctional systems Practitioners have long known that young people who abscond from placement are at increased risk. Academics from the University of Michigan in the United States have completed an interesting study looking at the relationship between absconding and entry into the juvenile and adult correctional justice systems. The study compared a…
Practitioners who work with high-risk adolescents (HRA) often wonder who such adolescents turn to for help in times of crisis. A recent Israeli study looked at the differing reasons HRAs seek help from youth workers versus others, e.g. parents, peers and teachers. Youth workers are defined as workers in non-mainstream educational settings, which specialise in dealing with adolescents at risk.…
The objective of my blog is to make the latest research accessible to Child Protection, Out of Home Care (OoHC) and Youth Justice (YJ) professionals and carers (i.e. referred collectively as ‘Practitioners’). It aims to answer the question of ‘what works’ for families and children involved the child protection and youth justice systems. The blog promotes accessibility by using plain…