“Adoption has become a reflection of the horror and the generosity of our recent history.” – Laura Briggs
The term stress has an omnipresence in many situations in everyday life, but especially in professional activities. In some areas, such as the adoption field, the labor of a social worker involves specialized intervention in accordance with the legislation specific to the domain of activity. One of the segments of this type of intervention requires understanding and analyze the particular needs, motivations, requirements, difficulties, concerns, personal motives, beliefs, hopes, uncertainties, stereotypes, misconceptions, in order to assess the capabilities of the person/ family (material conditions and moral guarantees) to meet the specific needs (behaviors or conditions secondary to abandonment trauma) of a child declared by the court suitable for adoption process. Subsequently, the social worker from the adoption department ensures support, empowerment, provides counseling to clients and supervise them at all stages of the procedure until its completion (from matching a child to post-adoption monitoring to case closure process). Certain situations from those described above, in relation to the steps applied to the legal provisions in the institutional environment may lead to experiencing some forms of stress and related (moral/emotional distress, eustress, psychosomatic manifestations, burnout, moral dilemma, cognitive bias, problematic ethical aspects of the social worker practice).
Keywords: emotional/moral distress, eustress, adoption
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