Our newest class, Stress Management for Child Care Providers , which will be available November 6th, explores some of the stressors specific to child care workers. The class provides suggestions as to how to manage these stressors and offers direction on when to seek professional help with reducing stress levels. You’ll get an explanation of the impacts of personal stress, job stress, burnout, and secondary trauma. Because unmanaged stress can become chronic stress and contribute to high turnover in child care staff, it’s important to understand and address the stressors that we all experience.

According to the National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care and Early Education, low staff turnover is a key indicator of quality child care. One of the most effective ways to decrease staff turnover is to reduce stress through various measures. Child care workers experience stress due to many factors such as low wages, children with challenging behaviors, lack of training, under-staffing, conflict with parents and co-workers…the list goes on and on. Child care workers also experience personal stressors common in American culture such as relationship issues, financial struggles, anxiety and worry about the future, etc.

If you’d like to get a jump start on understanding your own experience of stress, you can complete the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) found here (PDF) . The PSS was developed by Sheldon Cohen, it helps individuals understand the ways in which various circumstances have influenced their stress levels over the past 30 days. 

The SHD Child Care Health Outreach team hopes the stress management class will empower students to have more control over their own stress levels by building coping skills and integrating self-care as a way of living. After you take the class, be sure to let our Behavioral Health Specialist know what you think. You can email her directly at adeas@snohd.org or write your comments into the class evaluation form.


Want to learn more about managing your stress?
Take this month's new distance learning class.