Youth Workers Equipped to Manage Risks of Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS)

At the height of the COVID pandemic, the Erasmus Plus Programme Funds our project to prepare youth workers to be better equipped to manage the risks of Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS), fear, anxiety, stress, and depression arising with their work. The project commenced in February 2020 and was completed in November 2022.

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Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) is a rapidly growing problem. Youth workers face a significant risk.
 

• They are often the only doorway of support and help, to the disadvantaged and destitute youth at risk.  Continual exposure to trauma and distress in others eventually takes its toll.

• Symptoms of Secondary Trauma – often appear similar to primary Trauma: compassion fatigue, burnout, anxiety, depression, the inability to concentrate, in elevated reactivity.
   

Prior to the COVID19 pandemic, 1 in 6 lives in the EU were suffering from mental health conditions (OECD, 2016). That changed. By June 2023, 46% of the EU’s population reported depression or anxiety; 49% had unmet needs for mental health care in 2022 (Eurobarometer). In comparing 2016 to the spring of 2020, loneliness had doubled in youth (18–25 years). When our project commenced 64% of youth workers enrolled in the project recorded a prior history of primary or secondary traumatic stress.

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The project provides youth workers with essential vocational development tools: increasing their capacity to stay intact, build empathy, improve their self-care and resilience, value learning, exchange, and collaborative experiences. It also equips the youth workers to contribute to their organisations and help improve surveillance of stress and STS-related risks in their organisations.

The participants respond to:

Disadvantaged, discriminated migrants, refugees, IDPs, displaced persons, socially isolated, homeless, youth in prison, suicide risk, drug and substance abuse, criminal association, radicalisation, trafficking, sex slavery, SGBV, Forced Marriage, Sexual Abuse, Honour killings, trauma and PTSD, young school dropouts
 

The participants acquired:
 

• Capacity to recognize and monitor the risk of Secondary Trauma Stress (STS)

• Tools and skills to prevent and mitigate STS

• Build inner resilience

• Help to establish low-cost methods to monitor and reduce STS in their organisations

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