STRAIN, OVERCHARGE AND BURNOUT IN THE RESIDENTIAL CHILD CARE. STRESS ASSESSMENT
Keywords:
Stress ratio, stress assessment, staff stress in residential child care institutionsAbstract
The paper presents some of the specific working conditions in the residential child care institutions and their effects on the staff motivation, engagement and psychological well-being and proposes an assessment methodology designed to reduce the subjectivity specific for traditional questionnaires and for the face-to-face interviews and to increase the accuracy of the evaluation of the impact (stress quotient) of the formal structures (patterns and rules) implemented on the level of child care institutions.The burnout became a common phenomenon among the staff working in the residential care institutions in the last decades. The staff is in most of the cases confronted with a high “density†of stress factors acting simultaneously and challenging situations, which are not always due to the psychological profile and behaviour of the children in care but also to some formal components and regulations designed and implemented in some institutions and to some management biases.
An assessment chart is also described having the advantage of not being based on subjective perceptions and meanings but on objective data concerning the organisation and functioning of the institution. The items of the Stress Assessment Scale are mostly non-descriptive and correlated with the existing working conditions and structures developed at the level of the executive management.
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