Page 43 - IJPS-9-2

International Journal of

Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Professional quality of life in the child protection

system: The mediating role of attachment
security and closeness in the child-employee

dyad

†
†
Flavia Teculeasa *, Florinda Golu , and Adrian Gorbănescu
Department of Psychology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract
Child protection workers who interact with vulnerable children daily are indirectly
exposed to multiple traumatic events, and the possibility of experiencing burnout
and secondary traumatic stress (STS) is high. Concurrently with these outcomes,
positive results can occur in this type of activity, which are experienced in the
form of compassion satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to explain the effect
personal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) exert on the professional quality of
life (ProQOL) of selected categories of employees (foster parents, psychologists, and
social workers), via the employees’ attachment security and closeness toward the
† These authors contributed equally
to this work. children they work with. This study is the first to investigate factors that influence the
development of ProQOL in a more complex sample of child protection workers. Data
*Corresponding author: were collected at a single point in time with the help of 11 Child Protection Services
Flavia Teculeasa
(flavia.teculeasa@drd.unibuc.ro) Bureaus from Romania, using an online survey, yielding 223 participants, including
130 foster parents and 93 specialists. The mediating model was tested with structural
Citation: Teculeasa, F., Golu, F.,
& Gorbănescu, A. (2023). equation modeling. The overall fit of the model is acceptable. The indirect effects
Professional quality of life in the of ACEs on the components of ProQOL are statistically significant, and attachment
child protection system: The security and closeness in the child-employee dyad act as protective factors against
mediating role of attachment
security and closeness in the the development of burnout and STS in this sample. Findings confirm the beneficial
child-employee dyad. International effects of employee attachment security and closeness towards children they
Journal of Population Studies, work with on their ProQOL. These results could be implemented by considering
9(2): 37-48.
https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.0884 attachment-based approaches in supporting professionals.
Received: April 30, 2023
Keywords: Child welfare professionals; Adverse childhood experiences; Attachment
Accepted: July 13, 2023
security; Closeness; Professional quality of life; Romania
Published Online: August 1, 2023
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s).
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the 1. Introduction
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution, 1.1. Child protection workers and their professional activity
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is In recent years, there has been increased awareness of the negative consequences
properly cited. experienced by social workers who treat trauma victims (Dagan et al., 2016). Children
Publisher’s Note: AccScience who are victims of abuse and neglect and who are placed in foster care represent a
Publishing remains neutral with category of trauma victims. It is notable that, according to Carew’s (2016) research,
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional almost all of the children who are placed in foster care have gone through a traumatizing
affiliations. experience. Burnout and secondary traumatization are examples of these negative

Volume 9 Issue 2 (2023) 37 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.0884