Practice Area 6 – Prioritising workforce development and wellbeing
Practice Standard 5 of the Minimum Practice Standards requires services to provide a workforce that is knowledgeable, skilled, and supported, to ensure consistent victim and survivor-centred care, provided in a culturally safe and trauma-informed way. To do this, workers and their managers need to have the appropriate knowledge and skills to best respond to the diverse needs of victims and survivors. While this is a voluntary standard for specialist and community support services that provide targeted programs that respond to child sexual abuse, it is relevant for all organisations. It is inevitable that you will engage with children, young people and adults who are victims and survivors at some point in your work, given the high prevalence of child sexual abuse in the community and the potential lasting effects of the abuse throughout a person’s life.
It is also critical that organisations support the safety and wellbeing of workers who provide responses to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. It is well-established that working with trauma can be challenging and have impacts on the worker’s mental and physical wellbeing and their experiences at work. Workers may also have a lived or living experience of child sexual abuse or have a family member or friend who is a victim and survivor, and require additional workplace supports.
It is important that you feel supported and know that you are not on your own
In addition to providing workers with the necessary tools, resources and support to perform their role and work duties, organisations are required to provide an environment which is safe and supports the health and wellbeing of workers. This includes managing employee burnout, vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue which may arise from exposure to trauma when working with victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. The National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse emphasises that trauma-informed practices must also extend to staff, particularly given the likelihood that some workers will have their own lived experience of child sexual abuse.
You need to be aware there are specific strategies and supports organisations can implement to safeguard the wellbeing of workers and promote the sustainability of the workforce. These include:
- fostering an organisational culture of safety, care, compassion and respect for diversity for both service users and workers
- embedding a trauma-informed approach into all organisational policies, practices, and procedures
- ensuring systems and processes are in place to identify, minimise and mitigate the risks and impacts of vicarious trauma, burnout and compassion fatigue among workers responding to victims and survivors
- actively engaging with workers about their health and wellbeing, particularly following a complex disclosure or critical incident
- facilitating access to supervision and, where appropriate to the role, therapeutic supervision
- providing appropriate training, professional development, and ongoing learning opportunities to ensure workers can meet the needs of victims and survivors from a diversity of backgrounds and groups, and work in a culturally safe way
- facilitating access to culturally safe training, cultural supervision and access to traditional healing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers
- challenging stigmatising attitudes and language in the workplace.