Thriving at Work- The Art of Social Work1
Social work is a challenging and rewarding occupation. Our statutory work,
particularly in care and protection and youth justice mean we are faced with
tasks which impact on other people’s liberty and we often see things which
most people would not want to see. Social workers often chose to do
statutory work because they enjoy the complexity of the work and hope to
affect positive change. This makes it all the more important to ensure we
care for ourselves to be able manage occupational stress and thrive at work
so we can have a positive impact.
Stress as challenging and energising
Stress is an enduring and normal part of our personal and professional lives.
Stress can be expressed positively or negatively depending on a complex
array of factors. When we think about stress we often associate it with the
negative aspects, but positive stress is an important incentive in our lives
and can motivate us and positively challenge us. Van Heugten suggests that
“(k)ept within reasonable limits, stress stimulates our thinking and energises
our actions” (2009, p440). Resilience can also be built to increase our ability
to cope. Something that was once highly stressful, for instance when we first
learned to drive a car, can become commonplace once we become familiar
with how to do it.
People often have quite unique responses to stress. How one individual
copes with a situation may differ significantly from how their co-worker
reacts to the same scenario. Individuals also vary in their ability to cope with
different demands at different points in their lives and sometimes even from
week to week.
Knowing yourself, your strengths and how you cope with stress at different
times is important to caring for yourself and managing stress in both
personal and professional settings. In particular it is useful to understand
what levels of stress motivate you and what disempowers you. Stress is often
related to unreasonable expectations of yourself and when stress becomes
excessive it is useful to re-evaluate what demands you are placing on
yourself. Understanding your limits makes it more likely you will be to seek
out support when you need it.
Realising when stress is becoming unmanageable is a clear first step to
putting in place a remedy manage it. Over time persistent and demanding
levels of stress can lead to burnout which has potential physical and
psychological effects. Putting steps in place early to manage stress increases
our ability to experience stress as energising rather than debilitating.
Influence of Personal Experience on our Ability to Engage with Stress
How we interact in the world and cope with stress is developed over a
lifetime and is largely shaped by an interplay of personal experiences,
occupational experiences and early experiences stretching back to childhood
Aspects of this paper have been drawn from Van Heugten, K. (2009) ‘Thriving at Work:
Preventing Occupational Stress’, in Connolly, M & Harms, L. (eds) Social Work: Contexts and Practice
Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
1
(see Figure 1). Although professionalism demands we keep our personal lives
separate from our occupational lives we cannot work in a vacuum and
inevitably the areas overlap. Understanding how these aspects influence how
we interpret demands on us is helpful, particular if seen on a continuum
from energising to traumatising. Collins (2008) suggests this is further
impacted by our levels of optimism, self-esteem, hardiness and internal
locus of control.
Figure 1
Personal
experience
Early
experiences
Occupational
experience
Energising
Traumatising
How our personal experience affects our interactions with others and our
practice needs to be understood and acknowledged in order to put in place
the appropriate boundaries between our professional and personal selves.
For some a relatively minor incident may evoke in the worker a memory of a
previously unresolved traumatic event and therefore a strong response by
the worker. The opportunity to successfully work through and resolve these
events is important. We need to be careful to ensure that we do not use our
practice to sort out our own issues or troubles. Child protection social
workers need to be aware of this and of the actions they can take in terms of
both the safety of the children and young people they are protecting, and
their own personal safety.
Dynamics of Professional Dangerousness
The dynamics of professional dangerousness manifest from various aspects
of the work we do. Stress related to work load issues and a sense of lack of
job control are common to many areas of professional work, but statutory
social work has additional stressors related to the impact of violence.
Unhelpful coping strategies sometimes emerge as a result, including
minimisation, denial and disengagement due to feelings of helplessness.
Impact of Violence on Practice
To manage the emotional impact of our work we need to be aware of the
ways in which exposure to violence affects practice. Violence can take many
forms and can impact in various ways. It’s important that we use
supervision to manage the impact, sort out what it means for our practice
and if necessary seek additional support.
Practitioners can experience violence directly or indirectly through physical
assault, psychological violence and intimidation or vicarious trauma.
Physical assault usually results in a worker receiving some support and
protective action. Psychological violence and intimidation of workers may be
more subtle and as a result not receive the same immediate response despite
the fact that the impact may be stronger. Psychological violence can often be
minimised by workers and is treated as ‘just part of the job’. Not
surprisingly, many workers, find threats like ‘I know where your children go
to school’ make a huge impact on them. Seeking support is important.
Social workers are exposed to violent environments and can experience
vicarious trauma. It is crucial to recognise that an abusing family may not
have directly threatened the worker, but the whole atmosphere of working
with a family known to engage in multiple forms of violence will be
intimidating. Research has found that families severely abusive to a child or
young person often engage in multiple forms of violence, including selfdestructive behaviour, violence to other family members and to other people
in the community. Despite this, almost no workers take action against those
who offend against them. A failure to take decisive action can only
compound feelings of helplessness in workers.
Unhelpful Coping Strategies
When adequate supports are not in place to support workers, unhelpful
coping strategies sometimes emerge. Some of the commonly discussed
maladaptive strategies include denial, disengagement and minimisation.
Morrison (2004) suggests avoidance and distancing the self are common
coping mechanisms to protect people from feelings of helplessness. This
often leads to guilt and anxiety regarding professional judgement, furthering
levels of stress.
Social workers will be familiar with the desensitisation of workers’ that lead
to risk. On occasion it happens that a child protection worker, despite a high
commitment to their task, may minimise or in fact deny the level of violence
in a family/whānau. They may lead them to return a child/young person to
or maintain them in an unsafe household, failing to adequately intervene or
address issues of violence in the family/whānau. The chances of this
occurring are increased where social workers are unfamiliar with a
particular family, where they feel professionally isolated or where workers
have experienced a level of violence from the clients in the proceeding six
months.
Self Care: Thriving at Work
Self care is crucial given the challenging nature of social work, and needs to
sit alongside organisational care for staff. Self care opportunities bridge our
personal and professional lives. If we do not promote job satisfaction and
address occupational stress we risk physical, emotional and psychological
problems for ourselves and we risk impacting our relationships with our
colleagues, family and friends, as well as the families we work with.
Several coping mechanisms have shown to be helpful in building hardiness
and resilience against excessive stress.
1) Rest and recover: Research has shown that after a period of
experiencing stress we need time to rest and recover our energy.
2) Supervision: Supervision is a key mechanism in ensuring worker
safety.
3) Peer and team support: Speaking with colleagues, asking their advice,
giving and receiving their feedback are helpful for job satisfaction and
stress management. Conversely, a lack of peer support and
professional isolation have been associated with burnout (Collins,
2008). The Group Consult offers a good process for seeking peer
guidance (see also . Peer supervision may also offer benefits for some.
4) Talking about a stressful event: While research has suggested
debriefing or discussing stressful events is beneficial, over analysing
or dwelling on the stressful events can also impede coping (Collins,
2008). Critical Incident Stress Management offer opportunities for
more beneficial debriefing of stressful events.
5) Support from personal networks: Both formal and informal supports
have been shown to be helpful in coping with work related stress and
our personal networks offer us a source of informal support.
6) Self reflection: provides another key mechanism for managing stress.
By understanding your strengths and your limits at different times
you can better assess how to thrive at work. Self reflection can also
alert you to when you need to seek help. The Three Houses resources
is a useful tool for self reflection.
Morrison (2004) suggests the following are central issues in care and
protection work:
i. To know who I am and why I am doing this work.
ii. To develop good self-awareness.
iii. To recognise that some clients will not change.
iv. To develop realistic expectations of myself, my colleagues and my
managers.
v. To be clear as to the limits of my personal responsibility.
vi. To be clear about the issues of authority and control.
vii. To accept that a healthy scepticism is not 'uncaring'.
viii.
To know when I need help, how to ask for it and who from.
ix. To demand good supervision.
x. To maintain a strong leisure life.
xi. To give myself permission to learn from mistakes, be unsure, have
feelings, and to celebrate what I am good at.
xii. To believe that I do not have to be stressed or victimised to
care.
Resources
Supervision Policy
Child and Family Consult
Young Person and Family Consult
Three Houses
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM)
References
Collins, S. (2008) Statutory Social Workers: Stress, Job Satisfaction, Coping,
Social Support and Individual Differences, British Journal of Social Work
38(6) 1173-1193.
Morrison, T. (2004) The Emotional Effects of Child Protection Work on the
Worker, Practice, 4(4) 253-271.
Van Heugten, K. (2009) ‘Thriving at Work: Preventing Occupational Stress’,
in Connolly, M & Harms, L. (eds) Social Work: Contexts and Practice
Melbourne: Oxford University Press. (link to library to order)