Resilience and Personal Effectiveness for Social Workers

Jim Greer, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781473919174, 9781473919167
• eBook ISBN: 9781473965720
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Social work in the 21st century is facing great change and upheaval in a period of Government austerity measures. From worsening pay rates to limited resources, these are increasingly challenging times in which social workers practice. It is therefore important that social work students are prepared for the realities of working within the modern social care system - that they have the tools and skills to care for themselves, and not just others.

 

This book is a straightforward guide on how to cope with the stress and pressures of today's social work environment by developing the right skills and knowledge. It will help students learn from a very early stage how to be at their best; from developing strategies to look after themselves and making the best use of supervision to the support they need to dealing with bullies and/or difficult people - all essential guidance on how to improve their health and mental wellbeing and prepare them to manage the challenges they will face.

1 Stress and the Social Work Role

Key Concepts and Issues in this Chapter

• The importance of resilience for social workers
• The centrality of emotional labour in social work
• Impact of the political and economic climate and the media on social work
• Physical and psychological effects of stress
• Understanding the nature of burnout
• How to understand when we are stressed or experiencing burnout
• Internal and external loci of control and how they affect our response to stress
• Practical steps to develop an internal locus of control

Why resilience is important in social work

If you were lucky enough to have a foreign holiday this year you will have (or should have) listened to a cabin safety announcement. One of the things about the safety announcement which is memorable to me and which relates to my decision to write this book is the set of instructions for using oxygen masks. The announcement tells you to fit your own oxygen mask before you fit your child’s mask or help anyone else with theirs. Our first instinct would of course be to help our child or someone else who appeared to be having problems and so the advice goes contrary to what our natural response might be in an emergency. There is, however, a good reason for putting our own mask on first. We can only help another person when we are able to breathe properly ourselves. Far from being selfish, the action of securing our own oxygen supply first is essential to us being able to help others. I first heard this analogy on a podcast by the business blogger James Altucher. It came back to me a year ago when I was interviewed as part of a research study on resilience and social work education. I was asked in the telephone interview why I thought it was important for social workers to be resilient and I used the oxygen mask example as a way of explaining why we cannot help others effectively without also caring for ourselves.

Resilience is the quality which all social workers need for the emotionally demanding tasks of the job. Soldiering on when we are burnt out and drained may sound noble, but to be an effective and safe practitioner we need to be able to think clearly and retain our capacity for empathy and warmth.

At its most extreme, the inability to cope with the emotional demands of social work can lead to burnout which means a complete inability to engage effectively with one’s colleagues and service users. Pines and Maslach (1978) described burnout as involving a negative self-concept, negative job attitudes and a loss of concern and feeling for clients. In a profession where the relationship with service users is central, burnout involves a fundamental inability to practise effectively or safely.

Farber (1983) notes that burnout has individual, organisational and societal factors. Clearly it is individual factors which you as a social work student or first line practitioner have most control over so this book will focus on advice on how you can look after your own wellbeing. However, as social workers we also have responsibilities to our colleagues and there are some stressors which are due to organisational factors so the book will also look at mechanisms for collective responses to workplace stress.

Social work as emotional labour

Social work does not usually involve physical heavy lifting. We are unlikely to develop a bad back or physical strain from the job – other than perhaps the strain of leaning over a computer writing case notes. However, social work does involve psychological heavy lifting. Arlie Hochschild (1983), a sociologist, developed the concept of emotional labour to describe the emotional demands involved in human services professions (an American term covering social work, occupational therapy, etc.). Emotional labour involves having to manage the outward expression of our emotions. As social workers we have to show empathy and concern even when we are exhausted and have little left to give. We have to be able to give our full attention and focus to the problems of others even when we are preoccupied with problems of our own. Elements of the problems of others may conjure up unsettling feelings about our own personal relationships (past or present), memories of previous losses or bereavements or even unhappy events from our childhood. When this happens we have to put these feelings aside and continue to focus on the service user. We also have to suppress anger we might feel about service users’ behaviours towards others or irritation we might feel about their inability to change their situation. We have to project a professional persona in the face of demands, aggression, threats or even violence from service users, their relatives or others in the community. We must be non-judgemental when service users make life choices which we disagree with and yet express genuine joy when they achieve positive change. We must sometimes implement laws and policies, which on a personal level we feel are unfair, and yet we often cannot share our feelings about this with colleagues or service users. Having one’s emotions on show constantly means having to suppress some feelings (when they are negative) and bring others to the fore when we have to show empathy or support. This involves a great deal of self-regulation. This is emotional labour and it is one of the most stressful elements of the social work task.

An added dimension is that emotional labour in social work involves dealing with problems which are chronic and entrenched (such as poverty) or which involve high likelihood of relapse (such as substance misuse). This can lead to disappointment and frustration for social workers who invest a great deal emotionally in their work. I have heard social workers tell me that they have taken two generations of children into care from the same family. Such experiences are dispiriting and can lead to workers questioning the validity of their work.

Exercise

Emotional Labour

Think of a work situation which had a significant negative emotional impact on you (though not something which was a major trauma or tragedy). What feelings did you have and how did they impact on how you felt for the rest of the day or week? Did the incident or event spill over into your time outside work? Did you get support from colleagues or your line manager? When you think about the event does it bring up powerful feelings again? Do you experience any physical feelings such as tension in your face or body or a change in posture? If you tensed up physically then try to relax the muscles which became tense. Breathe slowly and deeply until you feel some of the tension dissipate.

Now think of an incident or event which gave you positive feelings such as hope or happiness. Think about the impact of this event and again try to get in touch with changes in your mood and any physical changes in your body.

What does thinking about these experiences tell you about how you react emotionally and physically to the emotional labour of social work?

External sources of stress for social work

In addition to the stresses which are inherent in the social work task, there are a number of other sources of stress which have put additional psychological pressures on social workers over the past decade.

Austerity

The global financial crisis of 2008 led to austerity policies across the USA and Europe to reduce government deficits, which involved the cutting and scaling back of public services. In Greece and Portugal this was particularly severe as swingeing public spending cutbacks were a requirement for sovereign bailouts. In the UK austerity cuts were a prominent policy of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government which came to power in 2010 and have been continued by the Conservative Government following their 2015 general election victory; and they seem to be set to continue at least for the rest of the decade. Furthermore, the fact that certain categories of public expenditure such as the health service have been protected from cuts has meant that the unprotected areas such as social care spending have been disproportionately affected.

Squeezed social services budgets have led to less resources for dealing with social problems and fewer opportunities for preventative work. This creates pressures and professional dilemmas for social workers who cannot provide the sorts of interventions for their service users which they feel are needed.

A survey of social work professionals conducted by the British Association of Social Workers (2012) found that 88 per cent of respondents believed that lives could be put at risk by cuts to services and 77 per cent considered their caseloads to be unmanageable.

A report by the Local Government Association found that between 2010/11 and 2013/14 local authorities had achieved savings of £10 billion through finding efficiencies but that budgets will have fallen in real terms by 33 per cent in the period to 2019/20. It is difficult to continue to cut budgets at those sorts of rates in the face of increasing demands on services without seriously affecting essential services.

The situation in local authorities is mirrored by uncertainty and instability in the voluntary sector. A report by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (2013) found that while new sources of funding such as payment by results were emerging, voluntary sector organisations were struggling to secure the finance which they needed. The report predicted that in 2017/18, voluntary sector funding was likely to be £1.7 billion lower than it was in 2010/11 (at 2010/11 prices). Furthermore, the replacement of block grants to the voluntary sector with bidding for contracts has further reduced the stability of funding in that sector and instruments such as social impact bonds seem likely to cause further instability and uncertainty.

Austerity has also had an impact on the earnings of social workers through wage freezes and below inflation increases across the term of the Coalition Government and subsequent Conservative Governments. Social workers, in common with other public sector workers, face threats of the removal of automatic pay progression, traditionally a reward for experience and level of responsibility. These cuts add personal financial woes to the other forms of stress which austerity has brought to social workers. They also contribute to public sector workers feeling that what they do is not being valued.

Social workers also experience anger and frustration about the impact of austerity policies on the most vulnerable in society. In a later chapter there will be some suggestions about how these feelings can be positively channelled.

Outsourcing and other changes to how social services are organised

In business, outsourcing is a commonly used method of accessing specialised expertise in a flexible and efficient way. However, outsourcing in public services has in many cases been principally a way of reducing labour costs. Cutting the pay of existing employees would be politically sensitive but by transferring the employees to the private sector, the unpleasant task of cutting workers’ pay and conditions is privatised along with the work. This weakens transparency and reduces the opportunities for trade unions to monitor and safeguard the conditions of employees. A report by The Adam Smith Institute (2014), commissioned by the public sector union Unison, found that ‘huge public-sector cuts are determining the objectives, nature and outcomes of the latest outsourcing deals’ and that reducing costs was the ‘key objective’ of outsourcing.

So far, it has been the jobs of lower paid care staff which have been outsourced but there has recently been a bill (Deregulation Bill) to allow the outsourcing of qualified social work jobs. This may lead to social workers setting themselves up in small practices and there are some potential benefits to this model in terms of professional independence. However, fears about social work being transferred to unpopular private companies with poor reputations led a number of senior practitioners and academics to write a letter of concern to the Guardian on 16 May 2014.

Outsourcing, regardless of any potential benefits to social workers who form independent practices, contributes to a climate of uncertainty and disquiet amongst social workers.

Media scrutiny and criticism of social work

There is a widespread belief amongst social workers that there is a strong media bias against the profession. Some evidence for this view was provided by a study by Community Care (2009) of newspaper coverage of social work issues during a three-month period. This study found a disproportionate amount of negative media coverage of social work and social workers. Greer (2014) suggested that local authorities need to be more open and proactive in engaging with the media and should allow social workers to speak directly to the press. It is difficult to blame the media for one-sided coverage when our own side does not comment.

However, regardless of why media bias occurs, it is demoralising for the social worker to see their profession regularly being the focus of negative media attention.

New public management

Harris (2007) described the changes that have taken place in human services management in the UK and USA since the 1980s as a move away from traditional administrative management (with an underlying respect for professionalism) to a transformational approach, which borrows heavily from management in the commercial world. He identified this approach as underlying a number of trends: contracting (including purchaser/provider split); consumerism; performance indicators (working to targets); getting more for less; increased scrutiny (including use of standardised assessment tools, eligibility criteria, etc.); and gate keeping and rationing.

Harris (2007: 20) suggests that there has been a more nuanced approach in adopting new public management in the USA where ‘social welfare management’ is seen as requiring its own special set of knowledge and skills. By contrast, UK professionals are more likely to be faced with the imposition of a more generic model of management which assumes that the public sector constantly needs to look to the private sector for inspiration. This unsubtle approach breeds resentment about deprofessionalisation and gets in the way of dialogue between the social work profession and politicians. Harris (2003) explained how a ‘business discourse’ within social work has arisen as part of a wider colonisation of the public services by the ‘culture of capitalism’. Since then the trends which Harris identified have continued and seem certain to carry on.

Eileen Munro (2011), in her review of child protection services, said that a focus on rules and regulations reduced the time available for social workers to carry out their assessments and that a target-driven culture has reduced the scope for professional judgement.

There are countless articles and books which express derogatory views about changes in public sector management with very vitriolic views on managerialism and neoliberalism. Frequently, this critique is applied...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• 1 Stress and the Social Work Role
• 2 The Psychology of Resilience
• 3 Valuing Our Own Health and Wellbeing and Improving Work/Life Balance
• 4 Time Management
• 5 Making Effective Use of New Technology and New Work Styles to Enhance Practice
• 6 Facing up to Conflict, Discrimination and Bullying in the Workplace
• 7 Making the Most of Supervision and Other Sources of Support
• 8 Leading and Following for Effective and Efficient Practice
• 9 Choosing Mindful Practice and Building a Resilient Career
• References
• Index