Burned out, Fried, Toast !

We call it many things, and

We arrive there many ways

Maslach & Leiter define burnout as:

“the index of the dislocation between what people are and what they have to do. It represents an erosion in values, dignity, spirit and will–an erosion of the human soul. It is a malady that spreads gradually and continuously over time, putting people into a downward spiral …”  

Symptoms include exhaustion, cynical detachment from our work, and feelings of ineffectiveness.  

Why are so many social workers are burning out? We’re good people who are staunchly committed to helping others. Here’s where we think the problem lies:  

Too many of our employers fail to empower us with the ability to perform effectively, doing so in a multitude of ways. 

      Mismanagement  While social workers may be nice people, many social work middle managers do not appear on the surface to be skilled administrators. However, looking at the problem more closely, when upper management mandates cost-cutting, middle management is often left powerless to support front line staff. This results in front line workers who are overburdened with unmanageable workloads. We suspect that social work middle managers, squeezed between the directives to “do more with less” and “work smarter,”  experience burnout just as intensely as front line workers. And we further suspect that we “front line workers” fail to recognize burnout in our supervisors as quickly as we recognize it in our same-level peers. But regardless of the reason for mismanagement … lack of training, lack of experience, lack of insight, etc. … when we find ourselves poorly treated by a social work supervisor, it seems to have an especially biting sting because it happens at the hands of “one of our own.”

      Schedule Imbalance  Many of us are employed in agencies which provide 24 hour services, such as hospitals, crisis centers, protective agencies, etc. It is to be expected that we all have to share the burden of working holidays, weekends, and off-shifts. Some employers, however, repeatedly assign undesirable shifts to the same workers. Additionally, the distinction between being at work and time off from work becomes blurred when we are required to carry beepers and/or make ourselves available for consultation or crisis intervention on an on-call basis during our time away from the work setting.

      Intense Work Days  It is our observation that the most intensely burned out social workers are those with the most relentless work days. Far too many social work employers schedule exhausting shifts with no provision for meal breaks or short-term, essential mental/emotional refreshment. Burnout under these conditions appears quite pervasive to us. 

      Chronic Fear of Downsizing  Money is the bottom line for most of our employers. Social workers in mental health, health care, and many public agencies function with constant fears and sometimes threats of staff reduction. Who’s next … me? This type of atmosphere does little to encourage professional autonomy, growth, or performance. 

      Lack of Professional Projects  We’ve discovered from personal experience that when we do nothing but patient care day after day, week after week, month after month, we begin to lose enthusiasm for our job and our profession. Feelings of professional isolation emerge, as well as the decreased ability to contribute meaningfully to the organization. Time and an opportunity to work on projects promoting better care of clients would lead to much more professional satisfaction! 

      Office and Inter-Agency Politics  Who doesn’t hate this one? We’d all  rather  just do our jobs and forget the power struggles that take up time needlessly. Many of our work days suffer from reduced productivity caused by the need to jump through internal or inter-agency hoops that are of little value for the care of our clients.  

       Lack of Appreciation This certainly occurs in all professions. But have you ever noticed how social workers are supposed to routinely deal with difficult and stressful situations without so much as a “please” or “thank you?”  Management sometimes compounds the our feelings of being unappreciated with last-minute schedule changes, denial of employee benefits, staff reductions, etc. 

       Personal Risk  Frequently social workers are expected to perform effectively in hazardous situations without adequate protective measures for our health and safety. Dangerous situations are common for psych social workers and child protective workers. Medical and prison social workers often face patients with an airborne-communicable diseases such as TB without being informed of the risk and without adequate protective masks. Social workers frequently must interact with clients on a crisis basis without security staff or basic safety precautions.  In our opinion, nothing else more clearly communicates an employer’s lack of appreciation and respect than to jeopardize social workers in this way during the course of our work day. 

source : http://www.friedsocialworker.com/socialworkburnout.htm

More than 70% felt they did not receive a fair wage for the work that they did,
writes Mithran Samuel
About 40% of social care professionals have taken a second job on financial grounds, while a majority are considering leaving the profession because of pay levels, an exclusive Community Care survey has revealed.

The poll of 1,785 practitioners, almost half of whom were social workers or senior social workers, showed 36% were “always overdrawn” (see graph 2) at the end of the month and 67% had debts other than a mortgage (graph 3). Of this latter group, 55% owed £6,000 or more and 37% £10,000 or more (graph 4).

Overall, 20% earned less than £25,000 a year and 9% over £40,000 a year (graph 1).

More than 70% felt they did not receive a fair wage for the work that they did, with even 61% of directors and heads of department holding this view, along with 80% of social workers.

Sixty-three per cent of practitioners had considered but then decided not to go on holiday over the past year, while just 18% described their financial position as comfortable, with 58% saying that they “make ends meet” and 17% saying their position was “unsustainable”.

British Association of Social Workers chief executive Ian Johnston said: “I’m not surprised because in a way the level of pay and remuneration and terms and conditions are not commensurate with the demands of the job. The complex nature of the job and the expectations are not matched by the working conditions. For somebody starting out in social work faced with that and the prospect of working for another 40-plus years you’ve got to have second thoughts about the wisdom of doing it.”

Helga Pile, Unison’s national officer for social services, said: “I think reading it, it very much chimes in with the work we’ve been doing around local government pay this year. It shows the effects of successive years of pay increases not keeping pace with inflation. It’s having a real impact on the family finances it’s a real indication of the state of public sector pay policy. Local government has been left further and further behind other sectors which have had pay restructuring along the lines of Agenda for Change [for health staff].”

The survey’s results came in the same week that Skills for Care published figures in a report on the adult social care workforce showing that social workers earned 84% of the average weekly wage for professionals in the UK, as of April 2007.

They took home £521 a week on average, less than probation officers and all types of teacher, though above nurses.

The Skills for Care report also showed that, as of September 2007, around a quarter of councils were experiencing recruitment and retention difficulties among field social workers for older people and disabled adults, and 35% finding the same for mental health social workers.

Our survey also revealed the extent of the gender pay divide in the sector, at a time when local authorities, which employ three-quarters of respondents, have faced criticism over their failure to implement equal pay regulations, despite a deadline of April 2007.

Overall, 12% of men earned less than £25,000, compared with 24% of women, while 14% of men earned over £40,000, compared to 6% of women.

There was strong support for significant pay increases for local government social workers in the 2008-9 pay round, which is currently under negotiation.

Respondents on average backed a pay rise of 5.95%, well above the government’s public sector pay rise target of 2%, and in tune with unions’ demand of a 6% hike for English, Welsh and Northern Irish staff.

Directors and heads of department backed a rise of 5.47% on average, with social workers and senior social workers favouring rises of over 6%.

Overall, 47% of respondents felt staff should negotiate through unions if they received a sub-inflationary pay rise, with 25% backing strike action, including 26% of directors and heads of department and 29% of social workers.

In total, 64% considered pay as a driver for an alternative career (see graph 6), with those aged 35-44 being most likely to look for work elsewhere (63%) than those in other age groups. Staff in the north of England were more likely than those working elsewhere to consider leaving the profession (61%).

Two-thirds of respondents owned a home (graph 8), ranging from 75% of practitioners working in Scotland to 61% in London and the South East, and from 81% among directors and heads of department, to 62% among social workers. 

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2008/03/05/107476/poll-exposes-plight-of-debt-ridden-social-workers.html