This research study looked at the components that may influence teacher attitudes in an accepting manner toward including students with learning disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the reasons that may influence the attitudes of general education teachers toward including students with specific learning disabilities. The factors that were examined in the study included gender, length of years teaching, and the amount of special education courses taken in college. Elementary general education teachers from two schools in an urban school district in New Jersey were given the ATTM-m survey to determine their attitude towards special needs students. The results of this study indicated that general education teachers regardless of gender, length of years teaching, and the amount of special education courses take, were not willing to accept the inclusion of special needs students into the general education classroom. It is recommended that future research is needed to further investigate these findings.
Child welfare staff are at risk for secondary traumatic stress due to daily exposure to vicarious trauma while working with children and families who are traumatized, often due to family violence. The stress of working with maltreated children is significant in that it contributes to negative client outcomes and high staff turnover rates and results in an inexperienced workforce of care providers. There is a need to address secondary traumatic stress among child welfare workers using a systematic, organizational approach to reduce staff turnover and improve the quality of care delivery to children. New Jersey child welfare services are delivered via Care Management Organizations that often struggle to meet the federally mandated goals of child safety, protection, permanency, and well-being. Child well-being is often not addressed, and knowledge regarding trauma-informed care is often lacking among child welfare workers. The purpose of this capstone project was to investigate whether implementation of trauma-informed care practices in a child welfare service delivery setting resulted in decreased turnover and secondary traumatic stress symptoms among workers. Using the evidenced-based National Child Traumatic Stress Network Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit, a Care Management Organization’s service delivery design was changed to become trauma-informed and the impact of the change evaluated using measures of turnover rates and workers’ compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, and professional quality of work life.