Direct Care Staff Burnout Analysis

Organizational Support

Direct care staff often look to their direct supervisors or the organization itself for support to prevent burnout. The staff’s direct supervisor needs to be aware of the individuals employees stress level. This can be done my spending time with the individual while working directly with individuals and also listening and paying attention to what the staff member is saying. Many human service organizations offer very generous paid time off packages to their employees so that the employees have the opportunity to take time off for themselves or their families. While the paid time off package is nice the organizations need to look at other options as well to keep valuable employees and reduce burnout.

Employees who are

Reducing staff burnout and creating a positive workplace culture are two major steps in the right direction. Another topic is to determine what exactly makes a good direct care staff. If you ask any supervisor the quick response would be someone who shows up for their shifts, but there is so much more than that. The life experiences of people with an intellectual disability are largely shaped by their residential supports with the role of direct care workers being crucial to the success of people with disabilities achieving personally valued lifestyles (Dodevska & Vassos, 2013). It has been documented that the poor-quality of direct care staff has often lead to an increase in behaviors from the individuals being served. This leads to the simple conclusion that if the individual being served does not feel they are treated properly by their staff they will have more behaviors. This is a fairly straight forward concept that for some reason a lot of staff do not understand. Often times staff who are struggling with managing behaviors, feels that the individual being served is just a mean person because of their disability or mental health disorder. While there may be some symptoms that impact the way the person responds to certain things differently there is no correlation that these symptoms cause the person to be mean. This is the individual responding to the attitude of the staff. So the question remains, what makes a person a good direct care worker? A study Further Inclusive Learning and Development (FIELD) found the following qualities were mentioned consistently; positive attitude towards individuals; practical and efficient workers; treats individuals with dignity; displays understanding, compassion, empathy and respect towards those they are caring for; friendly, polite, honest and trustworthy; and directly communicates with