Beating burnout
Mike Bush
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Former social worker Mike Bush, now a consultant and trainer on mental health in the workplace, advises managers on strategies to help their staff avoid "burning out" and leaving the profession.
The quality of care provided by professionals working in health and social care is highly dependent on their own wellbeing. If care-giving professionals are tired, stressed, troubled, burdened, distracted or "burned out" they will not be in a position to listen, focus and attend fully to the needs of the vulnerable children and families they are supposed to be supporting. This increases the risk of a "revolving door" syndrome of ineffective or failed care.
The support on offer to professionals is therefore key - especially when it comes to emotional and mental health. However dedicated and competent a professional may be, they cannot sustain high-quality care without back-up. In the same way that parents often rely on the wider family to support them in their parenting role, practitioners need help from their "professional family".
Caring in itself is a stressful business and rates of sickness/absence, mental health problems and even suicide are higher in caring professions compared with the general population.
A recent study by the Social Workers Union found more than half - 55 per cent - of social workers intend to leave the profession within 18 months due to burnout.
Failure to promote the resilience and wellbeing of staff comes at a cost - not least the human cost to individuals whose mental and physical health suffer. It also has a real impact on the bottom line including the high cost of employing agency staff when employees are off sick and the many human and financial costs associated with failing to protect our most vulnerable citizens.
I suffered a serious mental health breakdown while working as a social worker as a result of work pressures and bullying, which is why I now campaign to raise awareness of work-related trauma and distress among health and care professionals.
Together with Ruth Allen, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, I recently co-ordinated a roundtable event to explore the mental health support needs of people working in a range of caring professions. This led to the creation of the Interdisciplinary Support Forum, which will meet regularly and work towards key goals, including a new set of professional standards for the care and clinical supervision of staff.
Here are five key steps leaders and managers can take to help beat burnout.
- Recognise the importance of your staff's mental wellbeing.To start with, leaders and managers need to recognise and understand the importance of mental wellbeing in their workforce. It should be a standard item on the supervision agenda and something that should be formalised. If left to individual managers, then it can be hit or miss. Support line managers to deliver high-quality supervision that addresses emotional and mental wellbeing.
- Trust your staff. Real trust is key in social work but can often go missing from management. Managers who are themselves under pressure may respond by attempting to micro-manage frontline social work staff. But this is often counterproductive. Putting trust in social workers to think of creative solutions to problems means they feel valued, empowered and confident. This helps to temper stress, boost morale and ultimately leads to better work with children and families.
- Teach people to understand and protect their own mental health. Social work training and education often falls down when it comes to addressing practitioners' own mental health needs. Leaders should ensure strategies to protect and promote mental health and wellbeing are incorporated into all staff training. They should also be mindful of their own needs.
- Promote reflective practice. Reflective practice is vitally important in ensuring the best support for vulnerable children and families and when it comes to supporting the emotional and mental wellbeing of staff. Social workers not only need the time and space to reflect on cases but also to reflect on their own wellbeing and relationships with families and children. Without this key part of social work, professionals can find themselves more likely to fall into rabbit-holes that lead to depression and ill-health.
- Share good practice and celebrate the achievements of staff. Sharing successful staff wellbeing strategies with fellow managers and others helps create a healthy workplace culture. The Interdisciplinary Support Forum is looking at establishing an interactive website to provide a range of resources on promoting health and wellbeing with the aim of creating a one-stop shop for professionals to exchange ideas, information and sources of further support. This could include setting up a telephone helpline to support people in caring professions who need immediate help. The forum is also exploring the idea of a national day to celebrate the hard work and compassion of people in caring professions. Children's services leaders and managers can put similar measures in place locally, including ensuring staff know exactly where to go if they are experiencing problems and creating local events to celebrate and acknowledge the important role of social workers and other health and care staff.
- Mike Bush is co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Support Forum at the British Association of Social Workers