The impact of violence prevention behaviour on threats and violence among child welfare social workers

The aim of this study was to determine whether Violence PreventionBehaviour (VPB) at coworker-, supervisor-, and top-management levelsis related to risk of exposure to threats and violence among childwelfare social workers. The study design was a two-wave prospectivequestionnaire survey data of child welfare workers in Norway with atime-lag of six months between baseline (N = 678) and follow-up (N =424), Overall cohort response rate was 34 per cent. Mean exposure tothreats and violence was 10.08 (SD = 14.83) events at baseline and 8.75(SD = 13.61) events at follow-up. A zero-inflated negative binomialmodel showed that Top management level VPB was associated with asignificantly lower risk of exposure to threats and violence (β = −.22, p< 0.01) at baseline, and follow-up (β = −.19, p < 0.01). VPB at thecoworker level was associated with higher levels of threats and violenceat baseline (β = .19, p < 0.01), but not at follow-up. Supervisor VPB wasnot associated with levels of threats or violence. Efforts from topmanagement to prioritise safety in decisions, and clearly communicatingthese safety prioritisations to staff, will strengthen VPB and thereby bebeneficial for reducing the occurrence of threats and violence amongchild welfare social workers.