ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on everyone’s life. Like many other professionals, social workers have been forced to adapt to these new working conditions and new challenges in order to support clients during the pandemic, as new needs have arisen. Together with professional associations from three nations (Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands), we used a coordinated approach to explore the consequences of the pandemic for social work professionals. This study was conducted during the most severe contact and hygiene restrictions of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the winter of 2020/2021. The data addresses the changes perceived by social work professionals in relation to their contact and communication with clients, the use of digital technology in the context of work, the professional response in terms of innovation, the working conditions and the psychosocial risks they face. Methods Cross-sectional data was collected from 7,241 social workers in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands through online surveys. Results The results show an increase in the workload of professional social workers and compounding problems of clients, together with a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communication and contact with clients. All of this takes place within the framework of changing working conditions and contexts. Our data shows that the use of digital technologies does not cause bigger problems for most of the participating social workers. It should in fact be noted that professionals have many positive associations with the use of digital technology in general. Conclusions There are both remarkable and alarming results concerning the mental health of social workers and their working conditions, as well as the position of the social work profession in general. © This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
ABSTRACT
Background: As a result of drastic changes in everyday family life due to the COVID-19-pandemic, a majority of parents in Germany expresses a need for support in dealing with their children. In turn, children and adolescents are exposed to elevated levels of mental burden and risks under the lockdown measures. The multi-family-program "Familien (achtsam) starken" aims to prevent addiction and other mental illnesses in children and adolescents and strengthens family functioning. Due to the pandemic, the program has been digitally adapted in 2020. Aim: The present study aims to explore the utilization of this prevention service and to compare it to the utilization of the presence program administered before the pandemic. Methods: Registration numbers, study drop-out rates and drop out reasons in the period of August 2020 to March 2021 (during the pandemic) and August 2019 to March 2020 (before the pandemic) are analyzed descriptively. Results: During the pandemic, registration numbers increased by 8,17 % . The study drop-out rate has decreased. The most frequent drop out reasons include concerns about the digital setting, intrafamily problems and illnesses and decreasing interest. Conclusion: Digital prevention services constitute a relevant and sustainable offer of help for families, however, possible obstacles to their utilization should be noted.
ABSTRACT
Background/Case Studies: The efficacy of COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) to treat COVID-19 is hypothesized to be associated with the concentration of neutralizing antibodies (nAb) to SARS-CoV-2. While high capacity, automated serologic assays to detect binding antibodies (bAb) have been developed, complex nAb assays are not easily adaptable to high-throughput testing. We sought to determine the effectiveness of using surrogate bAb signalto- cutoff ratio (S/CO) in predicting nAb titers using a pseudovirus reporter viral neutralization (RVPN) assay. Study Design/Methods: CCP donor serum collected by 3 large US blood collectors was tested with a bAb assay (Ortho Diagnostic VITROS® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Total, CoV2T) and a nAb RVPN assay. Although EUA approved as a qualitative assay, CoV2T reports a semi-quantitative S/CO. The RVPN assay uses a pseudovirus construct with native S-protein and target cell lines overexpressing ACE2 receptor and TMPRSS2 protease. Serially diluted serum is mixed with SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus to assess inhibition of viral entry in culture and reported as titers resulting in 50% neutralization of virus infectivity (NT50) by nonlinear regression analysis. CoV2T prediction effectiveness at several S/CO thresholds was evaluated for various RVPN nAb NT50 titers using receiver operating characteristic analysis. Results/Findings: 753 CCP donations were tested with median CoV2T S/CO of 71.2 (range 0.1-919) and median NT50 of 527.5 (range <40 to >10,240). The prevalence of CCP donors with NT50 over various target n-Ab titers were 86% >80, 76% >160, and 45% >640. Increasing CoV2T reactivity threshold reduces sensitivity to predict the target NT50 titer while specificity to identify those below nAb threshold increases for all targeted NT50s (Table 1). As the targeted NT50 is increased from >80 to >640, the positive predictive value falls dramatically while the negative predictive value increases, thus S/CO thresholds are less able to predict donors who have the target NT50 titer but more able to predict those donors who do not meet it. Conclusions: The selection of targeted nAb titer for clinical use will significantly impact availability of CCP for transfusion. Product release with CoV2T assay S/CO thresholds must balance the risk of releasing products below minimum target nAb titer and the cost of false negatives (CCP units below the threshold with adequate nAb titers). A two-step testing scheme may be optimal, with nAb testing performed on CoV2T reactive samples with S/CO values below the release threshold.