Child welfare workers: An innovative approach for interacting with secondary trauma

Although child welfare workers (CWW) are assigned a critical role to protect children, little focus has been placed on helping them cope with stress and secondary trauma that can occur when they observe and hear the affect-laden experiences described by clients. This article summarizes two focus groups which provided data to develop a two day training module for CWW to gain knowledge and skills through didactic and experiential learning. The model offers coping strategies to respond to job stress and vicarious traumatization. Benefits and implications for agency and school collaboration are discussed.