ABSTRACT
David Casey believed that workers must learn to accept the less-than-perfect circumstances of child welfare work. None of the workers were optimistic about changing the construction of child welfare practice. Other researchers have found that child welfare workers themselves reported a high level of overall job satisfaction. The realisation of high levels of stress and overall job satisfaction are not incompatible concepts. The problem of worker turnover, therefore, plagued both public and private sections of child welfare practice in Cook County. The workers, while accepting the inevitability of their workloads, did act to address the immediacy of their working conditions. This chapter discusses the varieties of stress in child welfare practice and shows how those stresses impact on the lives of the workers and of their clients. Particular attention was paid to the stresses that come from child welfare practice itself as well as stresses that come from the way the workers must carry out that practice.
