Caring for the Caregivers: Patterns of Organizational Caregiving

TLDR

The study examines job burnout in human service workers by analyzing their internal caregiving networks. Using a qualitative case study of a social service agency, the authors identified eight caregiving dimensions and defined five recurring patterns that illustrate how emotional resources are exchanged among staff. The analysis shows that these caregiving patterns form a system that can either facilitate or hinder agency‑wide caregiving, affecting staff capacity to deliver client care. The author thanks reviewers and colleagues for their support during manuscript preparation.

Abstract

The author gratefully acknowledges the comments of Marion McCollom and Vicky Parker on an earlier version of this manuscript and the extensive support of Robert Sutton and this journal's reviewers during the review process. The study offers a system-level perspective on job burnout among human service workers by focusing on their internal networks of caregiving relationships. A qualitative case study of a social service agency reveals how primary caregivers may be filled with or emptied of emotional resources necessary for caregiving in interactions with other agency members. Working from eight key behavioral dimensions of caregiving derived from the study, I define and illustrate five recurring patterns of caregiving that characterized agency members' relationships. By placing the patterns in relation to one another, I then reveal the system of caregiving, showing how it moved or failed to move throughout the agency as a whole. This system of caregiving is discussed in terms of its multiple determinants and its implications for members' abilities to perform the agency's primary task of giving care to clients.'