Child welfare workers’ experiences of client-perpetrated violence: Implications for worker mental health

Workplace mistreatment and insomnia: a prospective study of child welfare workers

“…The finding that exposure to workplace mistreatment is associated with reduced well-being among those exposed is in line with previous qualitative (Lamothe et al 2018 ; Lamothe et al 2021 ), cross-sectional (Littlechild 2005 ; Littlechild et al 2016 ; Shin 2011 ) and semi-prospective (King 2021 ) studies on child welfare workers, as well as with findings on sleep among social workers in general (Eggli et al 2022 ). However, due to the prospective design in which we adjusted for baseline levels of insomnia, this study extends most previous research by providing indications about a potential causal effect of client perpetrated violence and colleague perpetrated bullying on insomnia among child welfare workers.…”

“…Child welfare workers play a critical role in promoting child well-being and preventing abuse and neglect (King 2021 ). To guarantee high-standard social services to clients, it is crucial that workers are sufficiently restored and rested.…”

“…Recent evidence suggests that exposure to workplace mistreatment is an especially prominent work-related risk factor regarding sleep problems (Magnavita et al 2019 ; Nielsen et al 2020b ). Although workplace mistreatment has been highlighted as a prevalent and detrimental stressor also in child welfare work (King 2021 ; Lamothe et al 2021 ; Strolin-Goltzman et al 2016 ), there is a substantial gap in the literature on how job-related stressors, including mistreatment, influence the health and health habits of child service workers (Griffiths et al 2018 ; Robson et al 2014 ).…”

“…Conceptually, workplace mistreatment is an umbrella term that encompasses multiple forms of physical and psychological abuse from different sources at the workplace (Asfaw et al 2014 ). Client perpetrated violence is defined as an incident where a worker is verbally abused, threatened, or assaulted in some way by a client or client’s family member/guardian (King 2021 ). Colleague perpetrated bullying refers to a situations where an employee persistently and systematically is exposed to harassment at work from a leader or colleague and wherein this employee finds it difficult to defend him- or herself against the harassment (Einarsen 1999 ).…”

Impact of Work Value Perception on Workers’ Physical and Mental Health: Evidence from China

“…Work value perception generally refers to workers' perception of the value category, such as economic value, emotional value, social value, respect value, ability value, and interest value, and these above values in regard to the work that they are engaged in [8][9][10]. Workers' health has recently become an important topic in the field of labor economics [11][12][13][14][15]. Workers' health is not only related to labor productivity and economic development [16][17][18], but also is a crucial aspect of labor welfare [19][20][21][22][23].…”