Multiple pathways from trauma-informed supervision to secondary traumatic stress among child welfare workers: A serial mediation model.

Trauma-informed supervision has received increased attention as an effective intervention to prevent child welfare workers’ secondary traumatic stress (STS) and enhance their well-being in child welfare organizations. However, additional empirical research is needed to identify specific mechanisms through which trauma-informed supervision is associated with STS among child welfare workers working directly with traumatized children and families. To address this research gap, we tested a serial mediation model that hypothesizes multiple pathways from trauma-informed supervision to STS by analyzing the Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment survey data, which includes responses from 1,748 child welfare workers. Path analyses showed that a higher level of trauma-informed supervision was directly associated with child welfare workers’ decreased STS. Furthermore, peer support and self-care activities significantly mediated the association between trauma-informed supervision and workers’ STS. Overall, our findings suggest that trauma-informed supervision can reduce child welfare workers’ STS by facilitating their peer support and encouraging their active engagement in self-care activities. Therefore, child welfare organizations should provide supervisors with training and other practice opportunities to become confident trauma-informed supervisors.