The Perceived Job Performance of Child Welfare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Tamar Axelrad-Levy; Talia Meital Schwartz Tayri; Netta Achdut; Orly Sarid

doi:10.1007/s10615-022-00861-z

The Perceived Job Performance of Child Welfare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Clin Soc Work J. 2023;51(2):175-187. doi: 10.1007/s10615-022-00861-z. Epub 2023 Jan 20.

Authors

Tamar Axelrad-Levy^{1

2}, Talia Meital Schwartz Tayri¹, Netta Achdut¹, Orly Sarid¹

Affiliations

¹ The Charlotte Jack Spitzer Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel.
² Child psychiatry and the Center for Child Development and Mental Health, Jewish General Hospital, McGill University, 845 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0G4 Canada.

Abstract

While the evidence on the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of frontline social workers is emerging, the research on the impact of the pandemic on their performance is scarce. The presented study explores how the relationship between work environment predictors and perceived stress explains the job performance of child welfare social workers during the pandemic using survey responses of 878 child welfare social workers. The findings revealed the mechanism through which environment predictors and perceived stress interacted in explaining job performance during a time of large-scale crisis. We found that C.W. social workers who experienced greater COVID-19-related service restrictions reported poorer job performance, that perceived stress disrupted workers' supervision and autonomy, and that supervision and job autonomy protected C.W. social workers from the adverse effects of perceived stress and workload on their job performance. Conclusions included the importance of autonomy and supervision in mitigating job-related stressors and the need to adapt and enhance child welfare supervision during times of national crisis.

Keywords: Child welfare service; Job environment; Perceived job performance; Perceived stress.