Addressing the Indirect Trauma of Social Work Students in Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Field Placements: A Framework for Supervision

Intimate partner violence (IPV), which encompasses physical, sexual, financial, and/or emotional abuse in a dating or partner relationship, is a serious and prevalent issue that social workers respond to. IPV can create varying degrees of trauma among survivors, such as posttraumatic stress, hypervigilance, flashbacks, anxiety, and depression. Social workers play a key role in helping survivors of IPV recover from this trauma, which in turn puts them at risk of experiencing indirect trauma such as vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue. Unfortunately, social work students are at an even greater risk of experiencing forms of indirect trauma as they are often unprepared to cope with exposure to trauma. While there have been studies on mitigating indirect trauma of practitioners working with survivors of IPV, there is a dearth of research on the experiences of social work students in IPV field placements, and on the crucial role of supervision in supporting students to cope with exposure to trauma. In response, this paper: (1) defines indirect trauma and trauma-related concepts; (2) proposes a conceptual framework for supervision that detects and addresses indirect trauma among social work students in field placements; and (3) illustrates this framework with case examples of MSW students within IPV field placements. Implications for social work practice are discussed throughout the paper.