Ask our social work panel

What's the best piece of advice you would give a new social worker?

By Tilly Baden

Adult Social Care Manager and Best Interests Assessor

“The thing I wish I’d known when I started was how to recognise and deal with burnout. I wish someone had told me that no matter how resilient you think you are, some situations will leave you emotionally exhausted and ready to leave social work for good.

“Whilst it’s perfectly normal to have down days, if you start dreading going into work, or have knots in your stomach every time the phone rings - these are signs you are not OK.

“We give so much of ourselves to our profession, but the old cliché, ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup’ is so true. If you’re not in the right headspace to deal with all the trauma we are confronted with, you are not going to be effective at your job.

“Talk to people. Stay connected with friends and family. Build a fulfilling life outside of work. Demand regular, good quality supervision. Speak to your doctor if you need to.

“There is no shame in therapy, using mental health services or taking medication. Switch teams or fields if you need to. Do whatever you need to do to for your mental health.

“For some reason, this wasn’t talked about enough at university. We’d had cursory mentions of being resilient and we’d all heard the statistics that most social workers don’t make it past seven years post qualifying, but that was it.

“Maybe it’s better now, and students and lecturers alike feel more comfortable talking about the mental health of social workers. I hope so, but given the dropout rates, I’m guessing it’s not. “It’s OK to not be OK.”

By Matt Bee

Social Work Trainer, Writer, and Podcast Host

“It’s hard to answer this question without becoming overly sentimental, idealistic, and just a little bit vomit-inducing. I don’t want to embrace a new starter, hold them close, and have an Oprah moment by saying: ‘Be true to yourself.’ Particularly since, I think, this is exactly what I would say to a new social worker.

“Seriously, people always start out their social work careers on the right foot. They want to make a difference and do the right thing. And then, at some point, they wake up and all they want – all they really, really want – is for there to be less tasks in their inbox.

“Somehow, social work as a modern institution does this. It packages up people’s lives into tasks, stacks them in a pile, and then hands these over to a worker to worry about.

“But don’t worry about those tasks. Instead, always worry about whatever made you fill out your application form in the first place. Namely: why is the world so unfair, cruel, and unkind to some children and adults? And how do we stand up for them?

“Stick to that starting point and you won’t go far wrong.

The moment you find yourself worrying about the paperwork more than the people is the moment you've stopped doing social work and started doing something else.

“Stay on track. Stay focused on what brought you here. Nobody came here to worry about all the forms.”

By Vince Peart

Consultant Editor, Child Protection Expert, and Independent Social Worker

“There are many things I would like to say here. I would like to talk about burnout, personcentred practice, camaraderie, and humour.

“I would like to mention the importance of a work-life balance, of prioritising risk, and of collaborative working. However, I will stick to one very simple piece of advice that really did change my entire working life: timeboxing.

“Put simply, timeboxing means allocating blocks of time in your day to specific tasks and doing your utmost to only spend that portion of your day on that task. This means getting rid of your to-do list and, when you have a task, finding a space in your Outlook calendar and scheduling it in before it is due.

“Taking control of my day in this manner has helped me bring some order to the often chaotic world of social work and exert more control over my time.

“Of course there are inevitably times when a crisis will come about or an urgent matter means a total rescheduling of my tasks, but the key thing is that I always find space where I can move work to, and always refine my working to the time allotted.

“Prior to timeboxing I had a long ‘to do’ list that would be constantly scribbled out, rewritten, and rejigged as priorities changed. This cluttered and unrefined way of working resulted in poor productivity on my part. Whilst timeboxing may not be for everyone, it has worked wonders for me and is something that I wish I had known as a newly qualified social worker.”