Becoming a child welfare professional should come with a warning: "beware — this may change you forever and can be dangerous." The change, however, may be good if you can learn to cope with the stress of the work and grow from the experience. Secondary Traumatic Stress and the Child Welfare Professional, a first-of-its kind book, presents the tools to help child welfare practitioners and agency managers identify and provide practical and appropriate interventions. This book is based on the authors’ ten-year study of over 600 child welfare practitioners’ experience with traumatic stress and child welfare.

Provides

• Theory explaining the causes and effects of STS
• Practical measures to prevent and cope with STS
• Explanations of burnout and STS, and their differences
• Intervention plans for all levels of agency
• Chapters by both scholars and practitioners

Josephine G. Pryce (PhD, University of California, Berkeley; MSW, Our Lady of the Lake University) is associate professor of social work at the University of Alabama. She teaches a variety of courses in social work practice, research, and traumatic stress. Professor Pryce is the recipient of several awards for teaching excellence. The focus of her scholarship and writing is military families, veterans, lesbians, and gay men, and secondary traumatic stress and self-care for helping professionals.

Kimberly K. Shackelford (PhD, University of Mississippi; Oxford, MSW, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg) is associate professor of social work at the University of Mississippi. She was previously the director of training for the Mississippi Department of Human Services–Division of Family and Children’s Services and before that was a front-line child protection social worker and child protection supervisor. She continues to work with the Mississippi child welfare agency staff and other community service agencies for the continued improvement of services delivered to the children and families of Mississippi.

David H. Pryce (MSSW, University of Texas, Arlington; MA, University of Nebraska) is a social worker, author, and trainer specializing in secondary traumatic stress in the helping professions. He is a retired army colonel and a twice-wounded veteran of the Vietnam War. He also serves as a secretarial appointee to the Department of Veterans Affairs National Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans.