Burnout and secondary traumatic stress in child protection workers: Untangling the role of personal and work-related...

Child protection workers are at risk of developing burnout and secondary traumatic stress (STS). These conditions threaten their well-being and service provision, and may lead to increased turnover rates, which further undermines quality of services. Determining risk and protective factors that may be addressed to prevent STS and burnout is an important step to securing both employees work-related mental health and services for children in need. This meta-analysis examined personal and work-related factors associated with burnout and STS in child protection workers. A systematic search was conducted up to May 2026 resulting in 84 relevant studies (72 independent samples) yielding 592 effect sizes. Results showed several personal factors to be associated with both burnout and STS: negative associations were found for age, resilience, self-care, and network support, and positive associations for emotion-focused and avoidance coping. Work-related factors negatively associated with burnout and STS were supervisor support, organizational support, organizational climate, team collaboration, and compassion satisfaction, whereas positive associations were found for quantitative workload, role stress, and work-family conflict. Several factors were differentially associated with burnout and STS: problem-focused coping, autonomy, compassion satisfaction, quantitative workload, and financial reward were more strongly related to burnout, whereas trauma history, emotion-focused coping, avoidance coping, exposure to trauma at work, and coworker support showed stronger associations with STS. Notably, as most studies were cross-sectional, longitudinal studies are required to substantiate the status of these correlates as risk and protective factors in the development of burnout and secondary traumatization.