A study for social welfare worker's workload and quality of life from the public sector in Taiwan.

• Main Authors: Luo, Ting-Cheng, 羅鼎程
• Other Authors: Cheng, Yi-Shih
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/61630820944159253721

碩士 === 東海大學 === 社會工作學系 === 101 === In recent years, Taiwan has always lacked comprehensive investigatory research regarding the work content, workload, and quality of life of social workers in the public sector. Most of the related research centers discussion on the phenomenon of the shortage of social workers in the public sector and their stress from work, thus neglecting the relationships among the nature of current in-service casework, workload, and quality of life of these professionals. The subjects of this study were the social workers for governments in the domestic municipalities (cities of Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung) and quasi-municipality (Taoyuan county), who will be purposively sampled to be administered questionnaires. A total of 250 questionnaires were administered, 180 of which were valid questionnaires collected, giving a return rate of 72%. After running statistical analyses, we arrived at the following discoveries: 1. It was observed that the social workers in the quasi-municipality tend to be female, younger, and of lower income. Over half of these social workers are hired by contract, and the majority (nearly 85%) graduated with a major in social work or social welfare. 2. Types of current casework performed by these social workers are the following (ranked from most to least): eligibility determination, legal assistance, psychological counseling, financial assistance, and emergency services. In addition, among these types of in-service casework, eligibility determination is the one that most social workers feel has the heaviest workload, followed by emergency services, financial assistance, procuring bids, and evaluation assessment. This shows that eligibility determination, emergency services and financial assistance are not only among the current casework performed by the social workers in (quasi-) municipalities, but also the casework types that are deemed as most stressful. 3. These social workers have a medium to high workload. Most of their workload is attributed to time constraints, followed by degree of hard work, work performance, mental demand, and level of frustration. This shows that the social workers in (quasi-) municipalities frequently work under great time constraints. 4. Results of this study also show that the social workers in (quasi-) municipalities have a low quality of life corresponding to the heavy workload. In particular, there is a significant negative correlation between the level of satisfaction with physiological health and time constraints. This shows that for this group of social workers, the greater time constraints they experience, the less satisfied they feel with their own physiological health. According to the results of this study, we propose the following suggestions to the Bureau of Social Affairs at the (quasi-) municipal governments: 1. Administrative procedure for financial assistance should be streamlined; 2. Clearer evaluating criteria should be set for determining eligibility; 3. Emergency services should be delivered in a localized and accessible form; 4. Individual counseling mechanisms should be set up for evaluation assessment; 5. More complete education and training courses are needed for procuring bids; 6. Supervisory management should set maximum work hours. This is a fundamental study. We hope that the results of this study can not only aid in the understanding of the nature of work, workload, and quality of life of the social workers in Taiwan’s public sector, but also serve as reference material for government agencies in job design, work assignment, and casework arrangement in the future.