Autoethnography beginning: A child protection social worker’s experience and journey of healing

Researchers have been investigating secondary trauma for decades and the information as to its deleterious effects are well documented. Child protection social work is a profession where secondary trauma can be readily experienced because of the provocative nature of the job simply by interacting with children, youth, and their families. This project acknowledges secondary trauma as well as highlighting primary trauma, which the author has come to equate, through professional experience, as the impact of adverse organisational systems and workplace culture on the individual. Primary trauma, as it is laid out, is inclusive of but not limited to firsthand interactions of the practitioner with workplace bullying, punitive management styles, toxic working environments, moral injury, and the impact of high caseloads and staff turn over. The professional’s susceptibility to primary and secondary trauma, if left unsupported, can lead to compassion fatigue which can end up in burnout. This project proposes to look at autoethnography as method through the context of the researcher as the sole participant. External data collected within the literature review forms the platform from which the researcher focuses on the facets of primary and secondary trauma from within her personal experience and the literature on healing and resilience are employed as examples of strategies required for personal healing.