Social Workers’ Self-Care Practices: Buffering the Influence of Work–Family Interferences on Burnout and Engagement

Abstract

As a reaction to specific job stressors, social workers can experience job burnout. The job demands-resources theory posits that personal characteristics would mediate the influence of job stressors on either burnout or engagement. Within this framework, this cross-sectional research aimed to analyze the relationships between work–family interferences (as predictors), self-care practices (as mediators), and burnout and engagement (as outcomes). The sample included 437 graduate social workers from Spain. Structural equation modeling showed that family–work and work–family conflicts negatively predicted self-care practices and positively predicted burnout. Professional and personal self-care practices positively predicted engagement, negatively predicted burnout, and attenuated the impact of work–family interferences on burnout and engagement. To the authors’ knowledge, the present article is the first to test the job demands-resources theory with these variables on social workers. The findings support interventions for social work students and professionals enhancing self-care practices to promote engagement and to reduce burnout, and highlight the need to decrease job stressors and enhance job resources for social workers.

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“…Job burnout is a progressive psychological response to chronic job-related stress and includes three components: emotional exhaustion, which refers to the excessive depletion of one’s emotional resources, resulting in feelings of emotional and physical burden and strain; depersonalization, which refers to a decreased ability to empathize with clients, and a cold, overly distant attitude; and a decreased sense of personal accomplishment, which refers to a loss of job satisfaction and competency ( Lombardero-Posada et al, 2022 ; Yıldırım et al, 2023 ). Healthcare providers are exposed to many stressors including but not limited to challenges of clinical work, competing demands, conflicting roles, and relationships with leadership ( Demin et al, 2017 ), which resulted in high prevalence of job burnout in this industry ( Hall et al, 2016 ; Chirico et al, 2023 ).…”