Building Resilience in Early-Career Social Workers: Evaluating a Multi-Modal Intervention

• Authors Gail Kinman and Louise Grant
• The British Journal of Social Work, Vol. 47 (2017)

Take-home messages

• In recent years, there has been a focus on improving recruitment and retention in social work and continuing professional development. However, more knowledge is needed of the ways in which organisations can build resilient working environments that allow early career social workers to thrive.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention designed to enhance resilience-building in social workers in England in their first year of practice and supported by the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) programme. It specifically explored how a "multi-modal intervention" might lead to improvements in resilience-building (including self-efficacy, reflective ability and compassion for themselves and others) as well as psychological wellbeing.

The intervention included peer support and coaching; goal setting and personal organisation; self-knowledge, coping skills and stress resistance; cognitive-behavioural techniques; mindfulness and relaxation; and critical reflection skills. The intervention was delivered on three separate days' training over a period of two months by experts, and was supported by a series of self-directed activities designed to consolidate learning.

Participants included a study group of 25 social workers who participated in the intervention and a control group of 31 social workers who did not, both in their first year of qualified practice, in order to establish whether any changes were associated with the intervention. Participants in the study group were asked to evaluate the extent to which they found each of the different elements of the training programme useful at two time points: one week and eight weeks after the training programme ended. Therefore, no long-term impacts of the intervention were measured.

Key findings

• All of the training sessions were received positively, particularly the training on self-knowledge, which aimed to develop insight into internal and external resources and personal coping styles/motivations.
• Key benefits following the intervention included the development of individual emotion management skills; improvements in social workers' self-reflection and reflective communication skills; as well as an increased capacity to explore the nature and impact of their empathetic interactions with service users.
• There was no evidence that the intervention alleviated compassion fatigue amongst the participants, which was characterised by emotional exhaustion and cynicism. However, this may be less relevant for newly qualified social workers (NQSWs). On the other hand, there was some evidence that the training led to greater self-compassion amongst social workers. In comparison, self-compassion reduced over the study period for the control group highlighting the need for social workers to receive further support in this key area.

Implications for practice

• There is a need to protect the wellbeing of NQSWs, particularly given high turnover rates. The study suggests that a relatively short-term intervention has considerable potential to enhance the emotional resilience and the psychological wellbeing of NQSWs. However, more in-depth training would broaden and consolidate these skills and potentially increase longer-term benefits. These would benefit from being led by expert trainers familiar with everyday social work practice.
• More knowledge is needed of ways in which organisations can build resilient working environments that allow social workers to thrive. Research in Practice has published a strategic briefing on building emotional resilience in the children and families workforce and practice tool on supporting emotional resilience within social workers that provide guidance on how emotional resilience can be promoted effectively in social work through team and individual supervision.

The research section for this special report is based on a selection of academic studies which have been explored and summarised by Research in Practice, part of the Dartington Hall Trust.

This article is part of CYP Now's special report on Recruitment and Retention in Social Care. Click here for more