On the Frontlines: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Workers’ Well-Being

Abstract

The crisis created by the spread of COVID-19 brought increasing needs and referrals to social welfare services in many countries. However, at the same time, social services suffered from staff cutbacks and service closures, resulting in significant workload increases to address the hardships associated with the pandemic. This article investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Israeli social workers’ well-being, using a mixed-methods design with a sample of 2,542 licensed social workers. Findings show that over 70 percent of social workers suffered from at least one health problem related to their work. Path analysis findings indicated that social workers who experienced greater service restrictions reported a greater decrease in job satisfaction and experienced higher levels of stress and work-related problems. Machine learning emotion-detection analysis revealed that the pandemic affected their lives, causing feelings of fear, frustration, and sadness. This article demonstrates how social workers whose work was characterized by greater service restrictions were less satisfied with their jobs, more stressed, and experienced greater job-related health problems, and concludes with a discussion of the implications for social work practice in times of crisis.

The Perceived Job Performance of Child Welfare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Despite the increased caseloads, child welfare services operated under frequently modified social-distancing restrictions, which included repeated mandated lockdowns, self-quarantines (Tener et al, 2020 ; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2022 ), staff shortages, and service cutbacks (e.g., Ashcroft et al, 2022 ; Katz et al, 2020 ; Marmor et al, 2021 ). Recent studies have documented the adverse effect of the pandemic on the social work workforce, and revealed that frontline social workers had experienced elevated stress levels (Banks et al, 2020 ; Schwartz-Tayri, 2022 ) because of both their own personal hardships and those of their clients (Holmes et al, 2021 ). While knowledge about the repercussions of the pandemic on the well-being of social workers working with children and families is emerging, empirical research on the job performance of social workers is still lacking.…”

“…Still, C.W. social workers worked mainly remotely, via phone calls and video chats, except for family emergencies (Schwartz-Tayri, 2022 ). Most child residential care facilities were closed, forcing children to return to unsafe environments and abusive family members, thereby escalating the children’s exposure to multiple risks (for review, see Sect.…”

Digitalising qualitative social research? On the potential of digital features to enhance data collection in qualitative research: the example of a virtual reality serious game in a qualitative research project

“…Recently, the first studies have been presented that used machine learning for text analysis in social work. As a paper at the ESWRA conference demonstrated, sentiment analysis based on machine learning was used to analyse the expressions of emotion in social workers' written free-text responses to open-ended questions (Schwartz-Tayri, 2022). This computational procedure blurs the boundaries of quantitative and qualitative analysis as do other emerging methods of computational social science, such as topic modelling, network analysis (Franken, 2023) or computational grounded theory (Nelson, 2020).…”

Characterization of superspreaders movement in a bidirectional corridor using a social force model

“…schools resulted in a learning deficit (14). Closure of services and transition to remote work deteriorated health in certain communities (15)(16)(17)(18)(19).…”