Oliver W J BeerUniversity of Plymouth | UoP · School of Health Professions & the Centre for Health Technology
Oliver W J Beer
Doctor of Philosophy
About
44
Publications
9,941
Reads
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104
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Oliver W. J. Beer, Ph.D., Associate Professor (Social Work and Institute for Health and Care Research), University of Plymouth
Additional affiliations
March 2021 - January 2022
Position
- Honorary Research Fellow
Description
- Plymouth Institute of Health and Care.
October 2019 - present
INQYR
Position
- Fellow
January 2019 - January 2019
Education
August 2017 - April 2022
August 2010 - July 2011
Exeter College
Field of study
- Child Workforce Development
Publications
Publications (44)
The health and well-being of social workers are attracting attention from researchers, organisations and the profession itself. Since the 1990s, there has been research examining the health and well-being of social workers in relation to working conditions and occupational stress. However, there is a dearth of literature indicating the evaluation a...
Background:
Little research exists examining burnout related to the multidisciplinary team (MDT) working in a Children's Advocacy Center (CAC) setting.
Objectives:
To measure compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress (STS) among CAC MDT professionals; identify work and worker characteristics that may impact compassion sati...
The continued prevalence and severity of stress among social workers, despite previous efforts to address the phenomenon, implies that current prevention and intervention strategies are ineffective. This may be partly due to a needed shift in research from the quantification of stress, to understanding the role that individual cognitive, and emotio...
Consisting of brief and evocative scenarios, vignettes effectively elicit stimulus responses, examine individual cognitions, and explore novel or sensitive topics. While information and communication technologies have expanded research methods, methodological and ethical considerations for design and implementation of digital vignettes necessitate...
Background.
High levels of occupational stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue have been challenges affecting social workers, organizations, and service users for decades. Studies have historically focused on quantifying these outcomes, missing the opportunity to qualitatively explore the role of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses in...
While scholarship has identified LGBTQ + youths’ increased risk of overt online victimization, specific forms and particular effects of covert prejudice and discrimination have not been examined. This study explored psychophysiological reactions to, and impacts of, digital microaggressions on LGBTQ + youth (aged 14–24) utilizing cross-sectional qua...
Studies have shown that stress has contributed to employee turnover and retention problems for agencies, and at the individual level, chronic stress has been associated with coronary heart disease, anxiety, depression, and many other negative effects. In the past, the extent of stress one has felt has been measured by subjective paper-and-pencil in...
Work-related stress has been identified as being harmful for law enforcement officers’ (LEOs) health. The absence of effective coping strategies exacerbates the negative psychophysiological impacts on health. The literature suggests that law enforcement employers and communities also feel the impact of stress among LEOs. This study addresses the ga...
Background: Heterosexually identified men who have sex with men (H-MSM) are distinct from other heterosexual men and from gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority men. Specifically, H-MSM experience discordance between their sexual identity (i.e., heterosexual) and behaviours (i.e., sexual encounters with other men). This sexual identity-behaviour...
Importance:
Public assistance policies may play a role in preventing child maltreatment by improving household resources among families of low incomes. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the largest public assistance programs in the US. However, the association of state SNAP policy options to Child Protective Services (...
By 2014, the majority of U.S. states had implemented differential response (DR), a system policy that seeks to serve families of low-to moderate-risk for child maltreatment through family engagement, diversion from formal child protective services investigations, and service provision. However, the effects of DR programs on child welfare dynamics h...
The rate of suicidality is increasing faster in Black American youth than in any other group in the USA. Researchers have found that family-level factors are important environmental factors for predicting depression and anxiety among Black youth, but less is known about how family- and friendship-level factors are associated with suicidal ideation...
Online fandom communities (OFCs) provide lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and/or gender minority (LGBTQ+) youth opportunities to access community-generated LGBTQ+ representations—contrasting mass media’s continued deficiencies in depiction of LGBTQ+ people and communities. This study sought to better understand LGBTQ+ ad...
Suicide rates among youth are increasing, and African American youth are becoming the most likely group to die by suicide in the USA. We utilized ecodevelopmental theory to investigate the relationship between parental incarceration and substance misuse and their association with suicidal planning in a sample of African American youth and young adu...
Background and Purpose:
Despite various attempts to address work-related stress and burnout, levels continue to be high. The dearth of evidence for effective stress-reduction interventions may be partly due to the variation among and/or minimal use of evidence-based theories and measurement instruments. To date, a plethora of theories, models, and...
Research on Latinx disproportionality and disparities tells a complex and nuanced story of risk, resilience, and differential treatment within the U.S. child welfare system. Studies suggest disproportionality and disparities in child welfare vary not only by geography among the Latinx population when compared with other major racial/ethnic groups,...
Internet-mediated social advocacy organizations (IMSAOs) have advanced over the past two decades. These organizations differ significantly from traditional “brick-and-mortar” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in terms of institutional structure and some of the tactics employed to leverage both collective and connective action. Connective action...
Background. High levels of occupational stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue have been challenges affecting social workers, organizations, and service users for decades. Studies have historically focused on quantifying these outcomes, missing the opportunity to qualitatively explore the role of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses in p...
Internet-mediated social advocacy organizations (IMSAOs) have advanced over the past two decades. These organizations differ significantly from traditional “brick-and-mortar” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in terms of institutional structure and some of the tactics employed to leverage both collective and connective action. Connective action...
Recovery Oriented Systems of Care (ROSC) is a coordinated model of delivery comprehensive supports and services that promote recovery, health, and wellness. Recovery oriented services emphasize an individual’s long term quality of life, housing stability, employment, choice, and social relationships, not just a reduction of symptoms. Since 2014, th...
Background and Purpose:
There is an abundance of quantitative studies identifying chronic levels of stress among social workers. Research suggests stress among the allied health professions is an epidemic, and has become normalized as an inevitable aspect of social work. Work-related stress impacts workers’ physical and emotional health, organizat...
Although research has focused on the idea of community resilience as the most effective ways for communities respond to and recover from stress, many gaps remain in the science of community resilience. While recent decades have seen an evolution in the conceptualization and operationalization of the term “community resilience”, the relevance, scope...
Health and wellness of social workers is gaining traction among researchers, organizations, and within the profession itself. As is to be expected, social work research appears primarily concerned about the service user versus the practitioner. However, it would not be an over-reach to hypothesize that positive outcomes for service users are interc...
In 2009, CNN Money rated social work as the number one most stressful job that also pays badly. Today, there is still a growing concern about the levels of stress among social workers which can also induce both short and long term health problems. Individuals facing stressful work conditions, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout may tu...
Researchers Oliver Beer and Professor Sheena Asthana of Plymouth University, UK, decided to investigate. They surveyed 427 social workers in England and here is a brief look at what they discovered. View the Presentation at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKu_I4B3R1Y
There’s little debate over social work’s status as a stressful profession. Social workers practise in an increasingly difficult environment characterised by rising demands, diminishing resources and negative scrutiny from the media.Recent surveys by the British Association of Social Workers and Community Care suggest workloads have increased, worki...
Social work in England operates in an increasingly challenging environment, with rising demands on practitioners, inadequate resources, poor levels of staff retention and negative public and media attention. Very high levels of stress have been noted among social workers, which can result in depression, burnout and higher levels of sickness (BASW,...
Presentation available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qukJHE0GgdI
MSc Research proposal poster (February 2016).
Projects
Projects (7)
The health and well-being of social workers, specially frontline child welfare workers (F-CWWs), is a public health concern. Previous research has primarily focused on the quantification of occupational stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue. This approach omits the importance of qualitative research in terms of understanding the process of stress, and the pathways between stressors and health outcomes (Beer et al., 2020, 2021; Griffiths et al., 2019, 2020). This project expands the current body of literature by using a qualitative approach (semi-structured interviews) to develop a better understanding of: (1) F-CWWs’ perceptions and understanding of work-related stress (WRS); (2) F-CWWs’ psychological and physiological coping strategies in response to WRS; and, (3) comprehend F-CWWs’ and supervisors’ recommendations to improving the multitude of challenges facing the profession.
The goals of this project include (1) exploring the psychological and physiological impacts for medical consultants as a result of breaking bad news to terminally ill patients, and (2) providing practical strategies to support consultants.
The Kentucky Child Welfare Workforce Wellness Initiative is an interdisciplinary and collaborative pilot study that combines three public agencies: Kentucky's Department for Community Based Services, Western Kentucky University, and Lifeskills (south central Kentucky’s regional community mental health care provider).
This project will integrate wearable objective biometric assessment technology which is an important and innovative component in this project. The research team will use a longitudinal design to evaluate the workers’ responses to job stress in the following areas: 1) Physical Health; 2) Mental Health; 3) Overall Well-being; and 4) Work-Life Balance. After the collection of baseline data, participants will have an opportunity to participate in a Mindfulness-Based Intervention (MBI). MBIs have been shown to assist participants in positively responding to stress, anxiety, depression, and pain.
The Kentucky Child Welfare Workforce Wellness Initiative is a grant-funded project supported by Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department for Medicaid Services, State University Partnership Program, and the Kentucky Social Welfare Foundation.
