**4.2 Practical implications**

Social workers tend to work with clients who are likely to have experienced severe difficulties and trauma [24, 40], and the difficulties experienced by both clients and social workers have increased even more during the pandemic [30]. Since nearly 90% of the social workers who participated in this study have experienced stressrelated symptoms, and one out of five of them had been away from their job because of burnout, it is important to provide organizational support in order to reduce the likelihood of severe stress symptoms and burnout [20]. Especially since poor working environment, poor social environment, and poor leadership predicted stress symptoms. Such organizational support should provide a decent case load [25] and good working environment. In addition, supportive administration in terms of leadership and social environment is especially important in order to reduce stress [20, 26]. Relevant intervention possibilities are also important to exist, since it can be a great stress for a social worker to have a case without being able to have quick access to relevant interventions, which were lacking in most cases in this study. Finally, it is of vital importance that supportive administration provides social workers with supervision [25, 41]. Supervision should benefit the professional as well as the workplace and should emphasize empowerment, knowledge, and growth [41] as well as selfreflection. Social workers who had been in supervision the previous year before they participated in this study had indeed significantly fewer stress symptoms than other social workers, which is similar to the findings of another study [25].

The various kinds of support discussed here are of even more importance in the area of child protection, since child protection workers were found to experience more stress than social workers working in other areas. It is interesting to note that personal variables, such as number of children in the household, were not predictive of stress symptoms. Thus, even though it can be important for social workers to take good care of their health and meditate [26], it seems that it is of outmost importance for them to experience healthy and good job environment.
