Trauma-informed attitudes in residential treatment settings: Staff, child and youth factors predicting adoption, maintenance and change over time.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the benefits of implementing trauma-informed care (TIC) training programs for child welfare workers serving in out-of-home treatment settings, or about how staff, child and youth characteristics affect adoption of favorable attitudes towards TIC. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to understand how attitudes towards TIC changed over time for child welfare workers receiving training and monthly supervision sessions. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Child welfare workers (n = 429) serving juveniles mandated to protection or offender units (ages = 3-20 years), across 11 child protection agencies in Quebec, Canada. METHODS: Participants completed the ARTIC-35 at pre-training, 6 months post-training, and 1 year follow-up. Multilevel mixed effect regression models were fit to examine outcomes for all subscales. RESULTS: Participants reported small improvements in attitudes towards TIC at post-training and 1 year follow-up for subscales related to problematic child/youth behavior (ß = 0.23-0.32, p's < 0.001). Multilevel modeling revealed that age group (adolescent), unit gender (boys) and legal mandate (offender) predicted higher pre-training TIC ratings for staff in management versus frontline positions across three subscales related to problematic child/youth behavior (ß = 0.77-0.93, p's < 0.05) and two subscales related to trauma work and support needs (ß = 0.66/0.84, p's < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Results extend previous research demonstrating an association between TIC training and improved attitudes towards TIC over time, and highlight specific contexts in which frontline staff may experience more difficulty applying TIC-based principles than colleagues in management positions.

Stronger together: Workplace social support among residential child welfare professionals.

BACKGROUND: Residential childcare workers (RCWs) in child welfare and youth-justice settings are at risk of secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and moral distress. Workplace support has been shown to be protective against work-related harms for some helping professionals and a lack of workplace support has been cited as a contributing factor toward workforce instability; however, little is known about what types or sources of support are effective for RCWs. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: 81 RCWs from 11 residential units in 11 of the 16 territorial service centers across the province of Québec, Canada. METHODS: This interpretive description study analyzed data extracted from transcripts of individual interviews guided by the Secure Base Interview protocol (Schofield & Beek, 2018). Responses to a single item were read for meaning, compared, contrasted, and then coded using the thematic analysis technique. The sources of support identified by participants as helpful were aggregated to reveal a common support system pattern. RESULTS: Multiple sources of social support were described; the majority were interpersonal interactions with peers, unit managers, and various interdisciplinary team members. Informal individual supports without role overlap and teams with a common vision were most often cited, even when formal supports were available. CONCLUSIONS: Implications of these findings include the need to conceptualize effective workplace social support for RCWs and to rethink the place of mutual-aid among trauma-exposed professionals in residential child welfare and youth-justice settings.