Report from the University of East Anglia reveals how social workers feel they lack support and understanding
Senior social work managers are prioritising paperwork and resource targets over families in need, social workers have reported.
A study by the Centre for Research on Children and Families at the University of East Anglia found a perception from social workers that senior managers did not appear to listen to their concerns when they raised them.
“Social workers perceived a lack of support and understanding of the demands on them from the organisation,” said the study which was led by Dr Laura Biggart. “Support at work is even more important in social work due to the confidential nature of the work. Whilst many social workers reported that they received good support from some peers and supervisors, social workers also reported frequent lack of support, often due to high staff turnover leading to supportive colleagues leaving teams and agency staff being used to fill vacancies.”
Average working life of a social worker is eight years
The research project assessed the benefits of Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence training for child and family social workers in relation to stress and burnout using a randomised control trial. The occupation of social work was chosen because of the emotionally demanding nature of the job.
Work-based stress and burnout are widely recognised as important problems at work among a range of public service professions. While emotional intelligence skills are associated with less burnout, there is little consistent evidence to show the benefits of emotional intelligence interventions on practice.
“The rate of work related stress and burnout among social workers is high compared to similar professions,” said the report. Curtis (2010) estimated the average working life of a social worker was eight years, much less than that of 15 years for similar demanding professions such as nurses.
High levels of stress and burnout contribute to high vacancy rates, particularly in the areas of child care, young people and families. At the end of September 2013, data shows a vacancy rate of over 14% and a turnover rate of 15% amongst child and family social workers.
The Health and Safety Executive has categorised the most common work stressors into the following themes:
Frequently changing organisational structures
Stress is a natural physiological and psychological reaction to changes and demands in the environment and helps the body and mind prepare for action. Prolonged stress however can lead to a wide range of psychosomatic symptoms such as insomnia or sleeping too much, muscle tension, muscle aches, headache, digestive system problems, and tiredness.
Emotional Intelligence covers the ability to identify emotions in oneself and others and to manage emotions in oneself and others. The report adds that given the emotional demands of the social work role, enhancing Emotional Intelligence resources could be one way of providing social workers with the skills required to cope with these emotional demands.
“The role also requires that social workers play a key part in containing high stakes emotional situations and social workers have to establish relationships with families who are unwilling to engage with them,” says the report. “In their work environment, social workers are increasingly working in settings where resources are often restricted and work in frequently changing organisational structures with consequent changes in team membership.”
The study included two studies with the first aiming to identify characteristics of good social work practice from multiple perspectives and create a self-report tool for good practice and validate this tool. The second was a randomised control trial to evaluate the effect of Emotional Intelligence Training on stress and burnout.
The Emotional Intelligence Training was developed for the study using the RULER programme as a framework and covered two days of training on Emotional Resilience/Emotion Intelligence in the Social Work profession based on The Anchors of Emotional Intelligence.
Forty-six of the 209 social workers who started the study withdrew over the study period, accounting for 22% of the original sample. Reasons for participants withdrawing from the study included: maternity leave, workload, leaving the authority, leaving social work and sick leave.
The study found:
Negative perception
The study highlighted that social workers found managing expectations from other professionals emotionally demanding. Other professionals often misunderstood the scope of social workers’ role and responsibilities, alongside having a lower threshold of risk. As a result, social workers find themselves having to take time to explain why they are unable to take the action that other professionals feel is required and deal with the antagonism this misperception often creates.
“Social workers were very aware of the negative perception of the profession that people outside the profession have and were frustrated at having no clear mechanism of addressing misconceptions held by the media about social work,” says the research. “Whilst it is understandable for external stakeholders to put pressure on child and family workers to protect children, the organisational response to this pressure has tended to foster organisational cultures which seek to monitor social work activity in order to be able to target blame rather than being solution focused.”
“Working under such scrutiny, however necessary it may be, is also emotionally demanding,” it adds.
Despite the many emotional demands of being a child and family social worker, social workers also report emotionally rewarding parts of the role. Social workers overwhelmingly found making a difference to children and families lives very rewarding, partly through seeing the change happening and partly through contribution to positive outcomes. Social workers also reported that direct work with children and families was very rewarding.
Training may not be enough to mitigate emotional demands
The two studies concluded that there “were no statistically significant effects of Emotional Intelligence Training on psychological strain, physiological strain or Emotional Exhaustion”, however, participants’ feedback about the training was very positive.
“The majority of participants stated that their objectives had been achieved, that the emotion skills learned could be put into practice and that they would recommend the training to colleagues,” said the report.
The report suggested four reasons as to why Emotional Intelligence Training in this project did not show any effect on stress and burnout:
“It is also possible that Emotional Intelligence Training may not be enough on its own to mitigate the high emotional demands of child and family social work,” said the report.
The social work practice tool to help social workers reflect on their practice has been created and further work will take place with social workers to refine it for introduction into social work and practice educator training. The report suggests that further work to evaluate different formats of training, such as including follow-ups and embedding follow-up into supervision systems, is needed.
The report concludes that emotional demands in social work and ways of managing these should be provided within qualifying social work training and continuing professional development.
The report also recommends:
“Remember that none of us are emotionally invincible or all-knowing, therefore thinking about using engaged coping strategies can be helpful when we feel overwhelmed,” the report concludes.
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