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Almost a third of social worker sick days caused by stress

1 min read Social Care
Just under a third of absences among social workers are caused by mental health problems, including stress and work-related anxieties.
Thirty per cent of social worker sick days are linked to stress and wellbeing, research finds. Picture: Adobe Stock
Thirty per cent of social worker sick days are linked to stress and wellbeing, research finds. Picture: Adobe Stock

Figures collected by the British Psychological Society (BPS) found that 30 per cent of a total of 500,021 sick days among social workers are due to emotional wellbeing issues.

In addition, the BPS found that stress and mental health problems are the most common reasons for social worker sickness among more than three in four councils.

From April last year to the end of March a total of 1.6m days were lost to sickness among children’s and adult social care staff, across 114 councils.

This is “against a backdrop of a debilitating recruitment and retention crisis, unmanageable workloads and soaring local authority spending on agency social care staff”, warned the BPS.

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