Social workers are at risk for experiencing burnout and secondary traumatic stress (STS) as a result of the nature of their work and the contexts within which they work. Little attention has been paid to the factors within a social worker's control that may prevent burnout and STS and increase compassion satisfaction. Empathy, which is a combination of physiological and cognitive processes, may be a tool to help address burnout and STS. This article reports on the findings of a study of social workers (N = 173) that explored the relationship between the components of empathy, burnout, STS, and compassion satisfaction using the Empathy Assessment Index and the Professional Quality of Life instruments. It was hypothesized that higher levels of empathy would be associated with lower levels of burnout and STS, and higher levels of compassion satisfaction. Findings suggest that components of empathy may prevent or reduce burnout and STS while increasing compassion satisfaction, and that empathy should be incorporated into training and education throughout the course of a social worker's career.

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Families who foster offer essential care for children and youth when their own parents are unable to provide for their safety and well-being. Foster caregivers face many challenges including increased workload, emotional distress, and the difficulties associated with health and mental health problems that are more common in children in foster care. Despite these stressors, many families are able to sustain fostering while maintaining or enhancing functioning of their unit. This qualitative study applied an adaptational process model of family resilience that emerged in previous studies to examine narratives of persistent, long-term, and multiple fostering experiences. Data corroborated previous research in two ways. Family resilience was again described as a transactional process of coping and adaptation that evolves over time. This process was cultivated through the activation of 10 family strengths that are important in different ways, during varied phases.

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The aim of this study was to explore the role of technology in the dating and sexual experiences of pregnant and parenting adolescent girls placed in residential foster care. Interviews with program staff ( N = 12; 50% Hispanic) and focus groups with adolescent foster youth ( N = 13; 46% Hispanic) were conducted to understand how technologies (e.g., cell phone, texting, and social media) influence youth’s dating lives, including how youth navigate conflict with a dating partner in technology spaces and their experiences with cyber abuse. Both staff and youth emphasized technology as providing an outlet from the home and forum through which to meet, interact, and sustain intimate relationships, the latter including the father of (a) child(ren). Youth creatively collaborated to access technology and became involved in each other’s relationships. Staff and youth discussed divergent risk contexts, staff emphasizing the risks posed to children (e.g., taken on online dates) and youth discussing online sexual solicitations, conflict with the child(ren)’s father in public and peer-involved online spaces, and cyber abuse. Helping professionals should be trained on the centrality of technology to youth dating and provide dating health education that includes attention to technology mediums.

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