The Australian Journal of Community and Disability Practitioners: 
2023 NSW Election Special Edition

Upholding workplace safety when supporting
survivors of institutional child sexual abuse:

Perspectives from community and legal practitioners

covering Greater Western Sydney

Authors: Laura Butler, Amy Lawton and Parisa Kalali

 

Introduction

Supporting survivors of institutional child sexual abuse is critical, complex work undertaken by diverse individuals and organisations across Australia. Community and disability organisations are a key arm of this support. In 2021, our team at WESTIR – a non-profit research centre based in Greater Western Sydney (GWS) – undertook a qualitative research study exploring the role of community and not-for-profit legal services covering GWS in supporting survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. The full report is available on WESTIR’s website.

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The broad aim of the research was to understand the current state of the service system for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse, through the perceptions and experiences of workers in relevant community based services. In doing so, the research study sought to highlight the challenges, gaps, and potentials within the service system since the completion of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (the Royal Commission) (2013-2017).

 

As part of this investigation, WESTIR heard powerful reflections from practitioners regarding their feelings of safety and wellbeing when supporting survivors of abuse. It is these findings that this article reflects upon. The implications of these findings are not only relevant for the ongoing wellbeing of practitioners, but the sustainability and effectiveness of the community services system of survivor support.

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Methodology

Between March and August 2021, our social research team conducted 15 semi-structured, qualitative interviews with 21 community practitioners representing 16 organisations. Participants were recruited by a mix of purposive and snowball sampling, identified through our existing knowledge of the sector and recommendations from participants. All interviews were conducted virtually to ensure participant safety and convenience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participating organisations included community services (n=10), not-for-profit legal services (n=5), and a local government (n=1).

 

The project was approved via WESTIR’s internal ethical review. The research team followed strict protocols to ensure privacy, security, and safety standards were upheld, as outlined in the Participant Information Statement provided to all participants. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed based on research objectives using NVivo. In doing so, WESTIR captured the experiences, perspectives, and insights of community service staff regarding creating and maintaining safety for workers supporting trauma survivors.

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Findings

Through interviews, we found several common themes regarding the sustainability of social sector workforce and practitioners undertaking the crucial work of supporting survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. Three themes were key: the importance of trauma-informed workplace safety; the impact of culture on staff burnout and turnover; and the need for adequate, pro-active training.

 

1. VICARIOUS TRAUMA AND TRAUMA-INFORMED WORKPLACE SAFETY

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A key concern for practitioners supporting survivors of child sexual abuse was workplace safety. Prominent among discussions of workplace safety was the issue of vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma, also known as secondary trauma, refers to “harmful changes that occur in professionals’ views of themselves, others, and the world, as a result of exposure to the graphic and/or traumatic material of their clients” [1]. Preventing and managing vicarious trauma is critical to protecting staff wellbeing, job satisfaction, and employee retention [2]. Consequently, it is also critical for ensuring the longevity and effectiveness of client support.

 

As identified in a research study produced to inform the Royal Commission, trauma-informed care is an approach to service delivery that centres on an awareness of trauma and its impact on peoples’ lives [3]. In undertaking therapeutic work and supporting survivors of trauma, trauma informed practices are critical for protecting staff from vicarious trauma [4]. Trauma-informed workplace practices include providing proactive support, regular training, and maintaining a work-life balance where personal lives can be separated from trauma-focussed work. 

 

With many interview participants openly discussing the practice of trauma informed care, this approach appears to be at the forefront of practice among community and not-for-profit legal services covering GWS. For example:

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“people [who] work in this sector definitely need to have a lot of support around self-care” (Interviewee 1, Community Service).

 

“[practitioners] need to be supported well in terms of making sure they’ve got adequate supervision, that there is that work-life balance in place… [it is like when] you sit on a plane and it comes on with the safety thing, saying ‘put your oxygen mask on first before you put it on your child’. Unless you’re looking after yourself, you can't look after your client. I think there really does need to be a focus on ‘how can we help you to do this work well, but also to remain well’” (Interviewee 13, Community Legal Service).

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Interviewee’s broad recognition of the importance of trauma-informed workplaces was not always positive. Some participants shared their concerns that workplace cultures posed barriers to practitioners enjoying such protections. Failures in establishing trauma informed workplaces were considered to be shaped by factors such as workload, occupational norms, and standards set by senior staff. For example:

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“Lawyers are pretty terrible at it [accessing support]… I always had external clinical professional supervision, I see an external supervisor every month and having that type of support for me is just foundational to be able to continue to do the really difficult work… [but] it wasn’t always set as the standard from the top down and I think that creates a culture of you can just keep going” (Interviewee 6, Community Legal Service).

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Even with services who enjoyed trauma informed workplace practices, these practices encountered new obstacles during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, many community services shifted their practice to remote service delivery to adhere to public health recommendations. To many, remote service delivery meant working from home. As existing studies have found, working from home can raise challenges such as disrupted communication and collaboration with colleagues, lack of social contact, increased stress, increased burnout, difficulties in maintaining work-life balance, and other safety concerns [5] [6] [7]. Concerns regarding providing trauma support from home were emphasised in interviews:

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“the team was listening to the stories of complex trauma of childhood sexual abuse. So, they were doing that within their own homes and not everyone in the team has an office. Like, some of them were working from their bedrooms, kitchens, things like that. So, how do you have that same sort of closure and detachment?” (Interviewee 9, Community Service).

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As limited communication can endanger staff safety and team cohesion [8], transitioning to working from home arrangement raised concerns about replicating team connectivity remotely. For example:

 

“what we know about… sustainability about trauma, is that you have to co-regulate with others. You have to have a relational aspect. And so, [in the office] the team were very connected and they sat together and they would obviously co-regulate each other through the day. I was really concerned about that because they were not near anyone [when working from home]” (Interviewee 9, Community Service).

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In addition to formal workplace practices, informal strategies such as personal coping mechanisms can help to prevent or manage vicarious trauma [2]. Participants identified personal and incidental practices that helped them to maintain wellbeing while supporting clients remotely. For example, one interviewee found value in the natural surroundings of their home, echoing existing research regarding the power of nature in trauma recovery [9] [10]:

 

“it meant that the intense work that we did over the phone was manageable. So, [it helped] if you suddenly hear a bird or something coming up your driveway, [or] look at a tree” (Interviewee 6, Community Service).

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2. CULTURE, BURNOUT, AND STAFF TURNOVER

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Additional risks to practitioner safety, according to research participants, were workplace culture and experiences of burnout. In turn, such challenges were observed to lead to high staff turnover. Long work hours, high and complex caseloads, and fatigue were frequent points of discussion seen to contribute to these issues:

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“Mondays I often start at 9 [o’clock] and finish at 8. The work needs to be done” (Interviewee 4, Community Service).

 

“we are really tired, and talking to other services, everybody is tired and it’s more than the usual ‘oh I’m tired’. It’s like the dam’s about to break” (Interviewee 7, Community Service).

 

Factors such as burnout and problematic features of a workplace’s culture raise a risk beyond practitioner wellbeing: staff turnover. As one interview participant discussed, their service was experiencing:

 

“quite a high turnover of staff [due to the] culture within workplaces… a pattern where great workers have come in well and come out the other end not well… [it’s] something that is not talked about” (Interviewee 7, Community Service).

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In 2021, a survey of 975 community and disability practitioners nationwide found that many planned to leave their employer in the next year or two, either for another employer in the sector (22% of social workers, 10% of disability support professionals, and 9% of community service workers) or to a different sector altogether (19% of social workers, 14% of disability support professionals, and 11% of community service workers) [11]. The loss of such professionals to community services and the sector is costly, with the loss not only seen in the skills and care of the practitioner, but institutional memory, team sustainability, service continuity, and potentially service quality.

 

A growing amount of literature explores the numerous factors impacting community sector workforces. Factors shaping workforce retention include low salaries, long work hours, burnout, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and more [12][13][14]. Workplace culture in the field of survivor and trauma support, however, has been less explored in research. From our study, we identified several additional concerns, such as job insecurity, specifically tied to insecure funding and contracting arrangements:

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“a big one for a lot of people is job insecurity… because our funding comes in 2 year blocks, most of us are on contracts, there’s no such thing as a permanent position anymore. That worries me… I live off this job, I don’t own a home. If I don’t have a job, I’m going to be one other [of the] ever-growing cohort of women over 50 who are homeless. That worries me” (Interviewee 1, Community Service)

 

3. TRAINING

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Regarding practitioner and workplace safety, one topic frequently discussed by interview participants was training. Effective training is critical for the wellbeing of both survivors and staff [2] [15]. Fields where participants identified practitioners were receiving training included responding to disclosures, child wellbeing, and managing vicarious trauma. For example:

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“[we are doing] a lot of the training [on], how to respond to the disclosure in the first place… starting at square one, the basic” (Interviewee 11, Community Service).

 

“[I] saw many colleagues deeply impacted and traumatised by the [work]… it was like every time the phone rang, it was like a trigger – you knew what was on the end of the line. And it was very stressful for the lawyers having to constantly step into that space of trauma… [but they] had a lot of training as well” (Interviewee 8, Community Legal Service).

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Yet, several participants identified limited training as an issue endangering staff and clients alike. A prominent training gap identified by participants was how to manage disclosures of sexual abuse. For some, managing abuse disclosures was complicated by the limited availability of specialist sexual assault services, which meant survivors sought support from more generalised services, where specialised training may not be standard. Regarding training needs for managing abuse disclosures, for example:

 

“recognising signs and indicators of child sexual abuse and responding to them is quite poor across the board… there isn’t effective training” (Interviewee 6, Community Service).

 

“[we need] more support for staff to manage disclosures and create safe environments for young people to disclose when we are working with them [so workers can] respond to that in a safe way” (Interviewee 5, Community Service).

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Training was not only recommended to be broadened within community services, but across the health and welfare sectors. Professionals in aged care and medicine were especially highlighted:

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“[it is critical for] all people who may be working with survivors to have an understanding of what this means for them. That's aged care, doctors, all of those professionals who might be hearing someone's story… we focus on current organisations and current children now, but our redress survivors are 60, 70, 80… how [do] our aged care service providers respond to people who are disclosing abuse, who are in their 70s and 80s? How do we do that?” (Interviewee 3, Community Service).

 

Participant reflections on the importance of quality training echoes the findings of the Royal Commission, which raised concerns regarding the lack of workforce training, skills, and capacity regarding recognising issues and responding appropriately [15]. The Royal Commission also noted the need for organisations to ensure that they have the appropriate policies, continual training, and effective support to identify possible abuse and support disclosure. In NSW, at the time of publication, training on child safety and responding to abuse disclosures is available through organisations such as the NSW Office of the Children’s Guardian and the NSW Health Education Centre Against Violence. Expanded provision and use of this training, in combination with time made available to service staff to undertake training, will only help protect practitioners as they undertake crucial survivor support work. 
 

Conclusion
In interviewing community and legal practitioners working to prevent and address the impacts of institutional child sexual abuse, our research study captured a glimpse of the invaluable work undertaken by individuals and organisations in the social sector. Moreover, it captured insights and experiences of the challenges involved in undertaking this work, notably vicarious trauma and burnout, which when experienced, were considered to be perpetuated by workplace cultural norms and insufficient training. 

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For the community services sector to support survivors and work towards enacting the Royal Commissions’ recommendations, it is important that services establish safe, supportive, trauma-informed workplace cultures that apply effective policies and support programs. The findings of our research reflected how services must ensure that professional supervision is not only made available, but is of high quality, and foster workplace cultures that support accessing this supervision. As COVID-19 continues to circulate and Australian workplaces broadly shift towards hybrid work practices, services must also be attuned to how workers can navigate trauma support work remotely, ensuring strategies are in place to help staff detach their professional work from their private lives. Investing time and effort into strategies that help teams connect and co-regulate, whether working on site or remotely, will assist in these protections. Services may also consider openly discussing the informal, positive coping mechanisms used by practitioners (such as engaging with nature, meditation, and exercise) and brainstorming strategies among teams to encourage wider adoption of peer support and self-care practices. Together, such strategies may help to reduce turnover and ensure that practitioners are not experiencing trauma as they help to relieve the trauma of others. As funders work to support survivors of abuse, it is critical that they are also attune to practitioner needs in the community and other sectors.