Practitioner Resilience
Building practitioner resilience is not just the responsibility of the individual practitioner or their personal capacities, skills, or resources. It is shaped by the quality of relationships, supports, and organisational systems surrounding them. When practitioners are supported within their teams and organisations, resilience becomes a shared process that enables them to manage the demands of their complex and challenging work more effectively.
High-quality supervision plays a central role in this process. Effective supervision maintains a balance between organisational tasks and reflective space — allowing time not only to review workload and performance, but also to consider the emotional impact of the work and the practitioner’s own wellbeing.
Supervision should include dedicated time to focus on building practitioner resilience, ensuring that supervision supports both professional growth and practitioner wellbeing.
In this context, high-quality reflective supervision and the environment in which it takes place play a vital role in sustaining practitioner wellbeing and the quality of care provided to children and families.
This resource offers prompts to support supervisors and supervisees to reflect on the environment in which supervision takes place. The questions are not intended as a checklist but as a way to encourage meaningful discussion and positive change.
Each setting will bring its own opportunities and challenges, and these prompts are offered to support both individual and organisational reflection.
Note: Link to resource forthcoming
The Ripple Effect
Our Rationale:
The Ripple Effect Cluster was developed in response to a critical shortage of foster homes, which has led to frequent moves for children in care. These transitions create instability and stress for children and increase vicarious trauma exposure for practitioners.
Our aim:
To create a concrete resource that highlights, recognises, and addresses the needs of children and
Key Outputs:.
- Highlight current challenges when children experience multiple moves in care.
- Recognise the lived experience of children and workers during waiting and moving periods.
- Create resources to support colleagues in making sense of these experiences, developing practice skills, and building resilience.
- Make recommendations for future work.
Key Outputs:.
- 6 animated videos illustrating lived experiences.
- Accompanying learning resource for reflection and discussion.
- Comfort packs for children during transitions.
- Improved spaces within buildings used by young people.
Recommendations for using the The Ripple Effect Initiative:
- Expand Comfort Packs to include sensory and grounding tools for trauma regulation.
- Develop training modules for foster carers on trauma-informed transitions.
- Create a feedback loop with children and practitioners to refine resources.
- Embed reflective practice sessions using The Ripple Effect videos in team meetings.
- Research the impact of The Ripple Effect on reducing placement breakdowns and practitioner burnout.
Links to the videos developed as part of the project:
Communication Cogs
Our Rationale:
The rationale for developing the glance card was to create a resource that was easy to access in hard copy or digital form, usable during an active conversation or for reflection from time to time. The group wanted to create a simple document that could be quickly glanced at to support communication. The window of opportunity for communication may be small, and every contact matters. Not being listened to can lead to mistrust and, in turn, impact present and future relationships.
Our Aim:
To create an easy-to-use resource that highlights, recognises, and addresses communication and its role in building, forming and retaining relationships with families, external agencies and within TUSLA.
Objectives:
- Highlight current challenges in terms of communicating with families, external agencies and internally within TUSLA.
- Create a resource to support, reflect on, and develop skills to support communication.
- Create a resource that allows for open discussion and, in turn, impacts on care, respect and strengthened relationships.
Note: Link to resource forthcoming
The Time Bandits
The Working with Children and Families group was renamed The Time Bandits, and it was the only group that had more than one initiative, with a total of four initiatives from this cluster. The initiatives focused on developing tools to help incorporate trauma-informed practices into their work. This included a sensory pack, a journal, and support in bringing siblings together.
Note: Link to resource forthcoming
