Associate Professor
Fairfield University
I am a qualitative researcher who utilizes mixed methodology to explore the lived experience of the human service, healthcare and mental health workforce including the phenomena of burnout and secondary traumatic stress in practitioners who specialize in delivering services to infants, toddlers, young children and their families. My professional journey began as a practitioner which allowed me to witness firsthand the realities confronting young children and families. That experience challenged me to interrogate research methodologies, policies and practices that do not resonate with the lived experiences of vulnerable, marginalized children and families. Elevating the voices and lived experiences of marginalized children and families who have long been excluded from theoretical models of human development, empirical literature, and policy development is at the core of my research platform, teaching pedagogy and professional service. My research centers on individual and organizational factors associated with burnout and secondary traumatic stress in the infant-family workforce. Individual factors include how experienced practitioners are, the balance between work-related care demands and home/family-related care demands and the self-care practices they employ to manage work-related stressors. Organizational factors include the quality of supervisory and peer support and structural aspects of infant-family serving organizations like the availability of paid time off, adequate resources for effective job performance and organizational culture.
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