Resilience in Residential Child Care - Results of a Survey Among Professionals

ABSTRACT

The high turnover among professionals in residential child care is a problematic development. One attempt to explain the departure of professionals from residential child care is the concept of resilience. The authors surveyed former and current professionals (n = 1158) using a standardized resilience questionnaire. The paper addresses the questions of how resilient professionals in residential child care are (compared to the general population) and whether lower resilience is responsible for professionals leaving residential child care. We examine the extent to which the resilience facets (individual, organizational resilience, and team resilience) individually impact the decision to leave residential child care. The results show that particularly high team resilience counteracts the departure of professionals from residential child care, while individual and organizational resilience do not exert a significant influence on the decision to stay in residential child care. Initial implications for innovation management in residential child care with regard to strengthening team resilience and organizational resilience will be discussed in conclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• turnover social worker
• residential child care
• organizational development
• professional retention
• professional turnover
• social work
• team resilience

Acknowledgments

Data from this study can be requested from the authors. The study was not funded by third parties. We thank the colleagues of the research project “Resilience in residential child care professionals” (2021–2022) who participated in the data collection and research process: Teresa Frank, Caroline Schwanke, René Frommont, Jana Hensch, Jennifer Gach and Rafael Rauh.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).