“Responsibility at-risk”: Perceptions of stress, control and professional effectiveness in child welfare direct practitioners

This study examines the role of work stress and control in child welfare direct practitioners’ assessments of their own service effectiveness. While much attention has recently been devoted to describing the problems of worker burnout and turnover in child welfare, no attempts have yet explicitly examined the role of work stresses and control on workers’ own effectiveness assessments. The results of this study, using hierarchical and simultaneous regression analyses, indicate a significant relationship between worker control and workers’ professional effectiveness assessments, as well as an important link between worker control and selected forms of work stress. After accounting for worker control variance, perceived work stresses were not found to be significantly associated with professional effectiveness assessments. No moderation effects were found in the perceived stress-perceived effectiveness relationship.