Negative Part of Social Work with Children and Youth : Secondary Traumatic Stress and Compassion Fatigue

Many of those who work in social work today are exposed to large amounts of trauma, stress and suffering. Even if the social worker is not the one who is exposed in the first place, the work turns out to entail high risks of suffering from secondary trauma and empathic fatigue. Those who work with children and young people are particularly vulnerable, as there is an extra amount of responsibility and need for care when it is a minor who has had a bad experience. This work aims to investigate the prevalence of secondary trauma and empathic fatigue on the basis of current research and how these can be counteracted and prevented in social work with children and young people. The work is a literature study and is therefore based on various scientific articles and books. Through the theories KASAM, sense of coherence, and coping, the results have been discussed and the result of this shows that by using one or more methods one can strengthen one's own health and thereby counteract mental illness, secondary trauma and empathic fatigue. An important part of the risk prevention work is to be aware, as knowledge about different mental conditions can make it easier for the person to see different warning signs in future working situations. It is also of great importance to have clear rules regarding recovery and expectations of the work role from an organizational perspective. In order to be able to counteract secondary traumatic stress, changes must take place on both an individual and an organizational level, since the events themselves and the clients' experiences are constant