The Child Welfare Supervisor as Stress Manager
By Joe Darocha

Introduction

With an increasing interest in stress management within child welfare and with the advent of the OACAS New Hires Training Module “Wellness and Self-Care,” there is a need to emphasize and train CAS supervisors as to their role in managing and reducing worker stress.

The question of “do we need stress management in child welfare?” is no longer valid. It has been answered through research¹, agency statistics on “stress” leaves, stress related worker retention issues and known cases of worker burn out.

It is also commonly accepted that there is a direct link between individual health and work performance. Simply put, the exhausted worker is a poor performer.

To its credit the field has been moving forward toward a more necessary and realistic view of stress management. There is a greater awareness and interest in making the stress of child protection work more manageable and providing staff with opportunities (organizational and individual) to validate and decrease their own work related stress.

As part of the new hires curriculum, the OACAS has included a training module (OCPTP New Hires – Module 9: Wellness and Self-Care) which allows new hires to gain early exposure to the issue of stress in their child welfare careers. As commendable as this training, it will not be successful if the messages and values behind the content of the module are not endorsed, promoted and incorporated into practice by the child welfare supervisor.

The child welfare supervisor’s role in managing the stress of a protection team is highly underrated. The supervisor is in a key and central position to not only educate, guide and mentor workers but also to emphasize the importance and benefit of effective stress management; moving the team towards a model of stress management based practice.

Stress management based practice is the philosophy and belief that the optimum service to families and children can only be provided by the “best” workers. In essence, those workers who have achieved a work life balance, maintained self-care, engage in professional development, exercise insight/self awareness and are well supported by their leaders will be able to provide the most efficient service and produce the most effective work.

To achieve stress management based practice the Supervisor must undertake three key roles:

1. Stress Management Role Model
2. Stress Management Advocate
3. Stress Management Facilitator

Stress Management Role Model

One recognized method of achieving behavioural change is to model the desired outcome in one’s own behaviour. In this regard, the supervisor must consistently demonstrate to the team what effective stress management is. One method of doing so is to be professionally non reactive. Some professionals may react based on an inability to consider the full scope of the current circumstance for example focussing on “what if’s” and not the facts of the situation. Their “reaction” causes panic and a lack of focus. In these situations there is little room for calm, reflective assessment and critical thinking. An experienced child welfare professional knows that even in the most critical situation there is still a measure of time for reflective assessment.

Therefore, to be professionally non reactive is to demonstrate the importance of reflective assessment and to model to others a professional response to a “crisis”.

The supervisor as a stress management role model exhibits:

Work - Life Balance

The supervisor ensures the proper self-management of overtime and vacation. She demonstrates boundaries and harmony between the life of “work” and life outside work.

Self-care

The Supervisor sets clear professional boundaries, promotes health and professional growth

Professional Development

The supervisor promotes training, skill enhancement, skill development and learning.

Exercises insight/self awareness

The supervisor is comfortable with and encourages constructive criticism, is open to being challenged, recognizes deficits and values solutions over ego.

Well Supported

The supervisor seeks support, establishes collaborative relationships, has or seeks the required resources and tools to enhance team and Worker functioning.

Therefore, the supervisor as a stress management role model, exhibits the behaviour she wants her team to emulate, putting forward extra effort when required and slowing the pace when not. If successful, the supervisor achieves two vital goals. The first is the promotion and nurturing of balance within each worker; secondly the probability that each worker will model the same behaviours in the presence of clients, thereby diminishing a need to rely on authority and more on mutuality.

Stress Management Advocate

The supervisor as a stress management advocate, advocates both “to” the worker and “for” the worker.

When advocating “to” the worker, the supervisor is focussed on influencing the worker to become more aware and empowered to pursue stress management based practice. In part, the supervisor gives the worker permission to engage in greater balance. The supervisor “puts things into perspective” and allows the worker to learn to express their professional needs. The supervisor does not, however, lose sight of the importance of the work nor does she ignore priorities but rather brings a realistic view to what is achievable at the time and the need to balance priorities. The worker who is frantic and overworked needs to be reminded and encouraged to return to a balanced state of functioning.

In situations where critical incidents have occurred, the supervisor promotes learning and proactive prevention. Oftentimes, the supervisor may be advocating for the worker against the worker’s own distorted “wants”. The worker may “want” to follow a non-productive work pattern and therefore will need to be challenged to seek more effective ways of managing the workload.

Opposite to advocating “to” the worker, the supervisor advocates “for” the worker. Here the supervisor is engaged in the traditional form of advocacy where, on the worker’s behalf,the Supervisor seeks resources and supports to assist the worker in fulfilling their service role. In this way, the supervisor supports worker effort in maintaining quality service. This ranges from the common requests for material supports to other areas.

Often times there are stressors that impact on a worker’s ability to function that are not related to the work itself. These personal stressors, whatever they may be, need to be addressed when it is identified that the worker’s ability to provide quality service has been compromised.

The supervisor then provides support in an effort to (within the supervisory role) assist the worker with the management of the external stressor. Here the Supervisor extends permission and provides safety for the worker to comfortably express any issues which may be affecting work performance. The supervisor should not inquire as to the details of personal issues but only seek to empower the worker to find resolution and/or external supports.

Stress Management Facilitator

The supervisor as a facilitator seeks the elimination, reduction or management of stressors hampering the worker’s ability to function. In this role the supervisor allows the worker greater autonomy in identifying their own stress management strategies and desired outcomes. Emphasis is placed on the Worker’s own ability to generate individual stress management mechanisms to cope with work stressors.

The essential question to the worker here is “What would help you manage (this stressor) so that you can continue to provide good service?”. The worker then generates their own solutions as to what would be useful.

As a stress management facilitator the supervisor assists the worker in identifying the parameters of what can be achieved while allowing the worker continued control of the process.

In essence, the supervisor helps the worker in assessing the boundaries of stress resolution. Is this a stressor that can be realistically eliminated? Is this a stressor that will need to be reduced or managed? By providing guidelines, the worker is than able to generate a realistic and individualized stress management plan.

Individualized stress management plans are much more successful than generic or imposed strategies. The person undergoing the stressor has a better notion of the individual effects of stress as well as the preferred course that could alleviate the issue. Therefore, the Supervisor attempts to facilitate identified strategies towards implementation.

Supervisory Style as an Obstacle to Supervisory Stress Management

Adopting a stress management based approach to coaching and mentoring child protection staff involves obstacles. One is an overly controlling supervisory style. To be successful in being a stress management role model, advocate and facilitator a certain amount of control must be abandoned in supervision.

Child protection supervisors, known in the business lexicon as “micro managers”, may not be successfully able to adopt the roles necessary to promote stress management based practice. Such a supervisory style does not lend itself to the promotion of growth, independence and professional development required to motivate workers to take ownership of and collaborate in a work style that views efficiency and professionalism in balance.

The “micro manager” is invested in exercising and maintaining control and therefore promotes stress as opposed to working jointly with the worker to relieve it.

Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter in their book “The Truth About Burnout”² identified a “lack of control” over one’s work as one of the leading causes of work related stress. This was again emphasized in research within seven countries conducted by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.³

A lack of reasonable work autonomy breeds uncertainty and lack of professional growth. The “micro manager” for whatever reason is opposed to worker self reliance and therefore stifles development. Such a supervisory style not only has implications for the child protection team but for the agency as a whole who must periodically cope with the negative effects (e.g. union grievances, low morale, work avoidance, poor leadership) of such a confining supervisory style.

In this regard individuals who see merit in moving towards a stress management based supervisory style must first take note of any tendencies or preference to “micro manage” and legitimately examine the need to abandon such a restrictive practice.

¹ Cheryl Regher, Bruce Leslie, Philip Howe and Shirley Chau. Stressors in Child Welfare Practice. OACAS Journal. Vol. 44. No. 4. December 2000

² Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter. The Truth About Burnout. Jossey Bass California. 1997. p. 42-44.

³ European Foundation for the Improvement if Living and Working Conditions.  Work Related Stress. Research Paper. Dublin. 2005. p. 3.

About the Author

Joe DaRocha, MSW, is a Children’s Services Supervisor at Niagara Family and Children Services. He runs a Seminar on “Stress Management in Child Welfare” and also teaches the OACAS New Hires Module “Wellness and Self-care”.

References

Duxbury, Linda (Ph.D.), Clive Higgins (Ph.D.) Where to Work in Canada? An Examination of Regional Differences in Work Life Practices. Carleton University. Ottawa, 2003.

European Foundation for the Improvement if Living and Working Conditions. Work Related Stress. Research Paper. Dublin. 2005.

Hersey, Paul. (Ph. D.), The Situational Leader. Center for Leadership Studies. Escondido, California. 1992.

Maslach, Christina. and Michael P. Leiter. The Truth About Burnout. Jossey-Bass. California. 1997.

MFL Occupational Health Centre. The Hazards of Poor Work Organization.  Winnipeg, 1999.

Regher, Cheryl., Leslie, Bruce., Howe, Phillip., Chau, Shirley. Stressors in Child Welfare Practice. OACAS Journal. Vol. 44. No. 4. December 2000

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