The British Journal of Social Work

Ben-Ezra, Menachem; Hamama-Raz, Yaira

doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcaa210pmid: N/A

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge to the social services workforce. They had to safely deliver services for children, families, and diverse communities during a global crisis. This study examined the associations between coping strategies, social worker’s job demands and psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. 615 social workers, working in various organizations and diverse populations in Israel, participated in the study. The results revealed that social workers’ job demands during the COVID-19 pandemic were significantly associated with higher psychological distress. Coping strategies, especially emotion focused such as avoidance, detachment, seeking emotional support, projection, venting of emotions and attempts to see humor in the situation were associated with higher psychological distress and job demands. In addition, emotion focused coping strategies were found to mediate the association between job demands and psychological distress. The use of ventilation of emotion as a coping strategy was the most dominant coping strategy. Our findings highlight the importance of modifying social service job demands during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is recommended to prepare guidelines/recommendations for such events. In addition, it seems that support and supervision are needed to improve social workers’ coping strategies during crises and to enable an effective social work practice.