Acculturation Orientations, Professional Interventions and Burnout amongst Ethnic Minority Social Workers Working with Ethnic Minority Clients: A Case of Arab Citizens of Israel

Abstract

In this article, we formulate a new bicultural model of social work with ethnic minorities. The suggested model connects acculturation orientations, professional interventions and burnout amongst social workers working with ethnic minority clients. We tested this model in a sample of Arab Israeli social workers (n = 299). The study results confirmed that ethnic minority social workers working with ethnic minority clients used interventions that may be classified as either rooted in the minority or the majority culture. Arab Israeli social workers used slightly more often interventions rooted in the minority than the majority culture; however, the two types of intervention were complementary rather than contradictory. Acculturation orientations of Arab Israeli social workers were connected to their choice of professional interventions. Specifically, a higher preference for separation was associated with more frequent use of professional interventions rooted in the minority culture. In contrast, a higher preference for integration was associated with more frequent use of interventions rooted in both minority and majority cultures. More frequent use of interventions rooted in the majority culture was associated with a lower level of burnout and a higher level of personal accomplishment, whilst more frequent use of interventions rooted in the minority culture was associated with a higher level of burnout. Based on the obtained results, an integrative approach to education and training of social workers and social work practice with ethnic minorities is advocated.

A bicultural model of social work with immigrants: Professional interventions, acculturation orientations, and burnout of social workers

“…Higher scores on the exhaustion and depersonalization scales indicate a higher level of burnout, while higher scores on the personal accomplishment scale indicate less burnout. The scale was translated to Hebrew by the first author, and its validity and reliability were confirmed in previous studies (Tartakovsky, 2012(Tartakovsky, , 2016(Tartakovsky, , 2022a(Tartakovsky, , 2022bTartakovsky & Walsh, 2016). Due to being highly correlated and following the authors' recommendations (Maslach et al, 2001), depersonalization and exhaustion were combined into one scale of core "Burnout."…”

“…The questionnaire was built using a hybrid emic-etic approach and a multistage procedure recommended by Millward et al (2012). Some items were adapted from previous studies on cultural competence and social work with ethnic minority clients (Alizadeh & Chavan, 2016;Bernhard et al, 2015;Haj-Yahia & Sadan, 2008;Sue & Sue, 2015;Tartakovsky, 2022aTartakovsky, , 2022bWilliams & Graham, 2016). Others were generated from 10 interviews with Israeli-born and five interviews with immigrant social workers.…”