Mental Health of Social Workers Working with Children: A Report

This research report delves into the mental health experiences of social workers, particularly those working with children. It examines the stressors inherent in their roles, including caseloads, legal frameworks, and the impact of events like the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employs a qualitative research approach, analyzing secondary data from literature reviews to explore the challenges faced by social workers, such as burnout, compassion fatigue, and the impact of emotional situations. It also identifies motivators like team working, rewards, and effective leadership that can support social workers' mental well-being. The report concludes with recommendations for improving support systems and promoting resilience among social workers to enhance their ability to provide quality care and navigate the complexities of their profession, with a focus on the well-being of both the social workers and the children they serve.

Mental health across social
workers working with
children

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Aim and objectives......................................................................................................................3
RATIONALE..................................................................................................................................4
METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................6
Literature review..............................................................................................................................9
Stress related to work settings caseloads funds to the local authorities......................................9
Resilience and supervision........................................................................................................10
The role of Law acting as a protector or exposing factor..........................................................12
Covid impact on the social worker mental health.....................................................................13
Analysis.........................................................................................................................................14
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................15
RECOMMENDATIONS...............................................................................................................16
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................17

INTRODUCTION
Social work is a practice based profession that promotes social change, empowerment of
people and development. This study is based on experience that social workers feel while
working with people or children of mental health. It will discuss negative impacts of stress and
burnout of social workers on the health of children and people with mental health to which they
deal with (López Peláez, Pérez García and Aguilar-Tablada Massó, 2018). In this regard, it can
be said that working with children of mental health is not an easy task as it makes social workers
frustrated. When children do not engage in treatment process then social workers find difficult in
performing their tasks and getting positive health outcomes. Lack of positive outcomes and
children’s engagement in treatment process affect their mental health such as anger, anxiety and
frustration.
This present study will discuss role of law that act and play as a protector or exposing
factor for social workers who deal with people with mental health or special needs. Legislations
protect social workers against lawsuits as it consists of several rules that they need to follow. It
works as a guide as how they can perform functions; improve quality of health of children with
mental health and others. It will discuss some motivators or motivational factors that motivate
social workers towards accomplishing goals and performing their job roles with effectiveness.
Some motivational factors that play a vital role in motivating social workers toward
accomplishing goals and improve health of children with mental health include: team working,
bonus, rewards, collaboration, team working and improved relations of them with others.
Further, it will discuss some roles and responsibilities that are being played by social workers
while dealing or providing services to people with mental health or special needs. Social workers
have several skills such as communication, empathy, team working and others. All these skills
make them able to perform their activities or functions in an effective manner. But there are
some causing factors that lead stress and burnout. It is important to focus on all these causes.
This study will discuss all important strategies by which all these negative impacts can be
decreased and one of the best way or strategy is effective leadership, training and supervision. It
has further discussed effectiveness of research methodology in research study along with all
important elements. It will discuss appropriate ways of collecting data by which researcher can
make better decision and can accomplish goals. Primary and secondary data collection is main
key of success of research study that plays a vital role in gathering data relevant to the research
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topic (Bland, Drake and Drayton, 2021). Data analysis also plays a vital role as it helps
researcher in making all collected data accurate and effective.
Aim and objectives
Aim
The aim of this research study is: “An exploration of the psychological experiences of the Social
worker SW working with children”.
Objectives
1. To conduct secondary research to find out what SW mental health experiences are when
working with vulnerable children
2. To critically analyze the literature concerning the SW roles responsibilities affecting their
mental health.
3. To critically review the data to determine what are the motivators to support SW mental health
in the work placement.
4. To form conclusion based on literature.
5. To make recommendations on the findings of SW who demonstrate mental health disorders.
RATIONALE
The major reason behind choosing the topic regarding the mental health across the social
workers working with children is that the children are most vulnerable with one or the other
problem. This is why the mental health of social workers is also impacted. Social workers are
faced with many problems on daily basis which can be related to the isolation, substance abuse,
violence, inequality and many more. There is a need for the social workers to develop and
implement various strategies so that the various issues can be addressed and many challenges can
be faced (Edelstein and et.al., 2017). There is also a need to provide appropriate trainings and
education to the social workers so that they can use their expertise and experience with the
positive mindset in the specific fields. Due to the rapid transformation in the society, the social
workers need transformation at a greater level so that they can support the children clients in the
best possible manner.
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The main reason behind doing the research is that the social workers are in greater stress
while providing care to the children. The main purpose of the social workers is to strive hard for
making the life of the individual productive for them. The major stress is when the social
workers provide care to the children for improving the mental health disorder because it becomes
challenging for them to cope up with their problems. The children who face mental disorders are
hard to manage (Mo and et.al., 2020). The social workers experience higher levels of work
related anxiety as well as the trait depression. Not only this, they also face more emotional
exhaustion as compared to psychologists or psychiatrists and are also found to be more
depersonalised.
The social workers also face challenges such as lack of adequate resources, blame on the
social worker, differences in the ways in which children are raised by the families, priority
differences between the tradition, culture and social work, religious and spiritual beliefs of the
children as barrier and many more. There have been various difficulties observed for the social
workers in providing care to the children because the demands are rising, the resources are
diminishing and also negative scrutiny from the media. The social workers are found to be
interacting with the children as well as the adults who are vulnerable at the individual level. This
is why they face mental health issues or physical disabilities (Mohajan, 2018). Working with
children does not only involve interaction with the children but also the families, teachers and
communities of the people who are vulnerable. The social workers also need to cope up with the
situation such as the child must not be in contact of the mother and this verdict needs to be
delivered in front of her. In these emotional situations also, they need to remain unaffected for
making the child feel safe. But being exposed to highly emotional situations can cause
compassion fatigue. These distressing cases make difficult for the social care workers to remain
unaffected. They need to interact with them on daily basis.
In these cases, they can suffer from depersonalisation, other identifiable symptoms like
headaches and emotional exhaustion. There is a need to implement various strategies which can
help them in delivering the care in safe way. They need to practice the emotional resilience for
handling the crisis and returning to pre-crisis state. The social workers need to find such
approaches which can help them in developing the resilience. They need to set aside time for
practising mindfulness which can help in managing the pressure and also focusing more on the
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work-life balance (Robinson, 2019). This can help in allowing switching of after work and also
being present in their personal life.
Time and patience plays a major role in this for managing the pressure and hectic schedule.
The positive impact of the social workers is not only on the patient child but also on the
community. The roles and responsibilities of the social worker affect the mental health of the
social workers. There is a need for the motivators which can support the mental health of SW in
the placement of work. This stress is increasing in the time of pandemic of COVID-19 when
there is a fear of spreading of the virus of Corona in the children which can worsen the situation
(Power, 2020). The stress of the social worker is increasing in this pandemic which needs to be
minimized for providing quality care to the patients. There must be sessions with the supervisor
so that the social workers do not feel overwhelmed and left disheartened when they do not feel
that they offered desired level of care to the cases. Furthermore, this is also observed that along
with the society being transformed there is a need for the transformation of the systems which
helps the social workers to reduce their stress while caring for the children. There is also a need
for right training along with support and the major skills which can help in overcoming the
challenges and issues. This research will therefore help in facilitating the social workers to
reduce the stress and will also help the other researchers for gaining insights about the ways and
the motivators which make them feel stress free (Caringi and et.al., 2017). The Social workers
and the supervisors of UK who interacts with the children will be more benefitted than the
others. This will also help the stakeholders of the hospital settings along with the practitioners.
This research will therefore helps in improving the mental health of the social workers even in
the times of pandemic of COVID-19 when there are many risks of spreading of the virus in the
children as well as themselves. They need to cope up with the specific problems of the children
as well as the problems which are associated with the pandemic. This will help in the personal
and professional growth of the social workers along with improving the quality of life of the
children.
METHODOLOGY
The research methodology is the specific procedures to collect and analyse the data. The
developing of the research methods will be considered as the most integral part of the research
design. These covers various aspects such as research types, philosophy, approach, design,
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collecting the data, sampling and analysing the collected data etc. (Dźwigoł and Dźwigoł-Barosz,
2018). The research methods in the current investigation will help in doing research about the
stress which social workers have while giving care to the children and interacting with them.
This will also help in gaining optimal outcomes which are basically the motivators which can
help in reducing the stress and can improve the mental health of them.
Research Type: Research type is basically categorised into two major types i.e., qualitative and
quantitative type. The qualitative type of data will mainly focus on the theoretical data while the
quantitative type of data mainly lays emphasis on the numerical or statistical type of data. The
qualitative type helps in exploring ideas and experiences in deep while the quantitative type
allows in testing the hypothesis by collecting and analysing the data (Ngozwana, 2018). In the
current investigation, the qualitative research type will be used in which no numbers or statistics
will be used and only the theories and meanings will be used for gaining insights about the
research topic and will help in achieving the research objective. The qualitative data will be
gained by going through various books, journals, publications, articles, online websites which
helps in gaining relevant information about the topic.
Approach: Research approaches are the procedures and the plans which deal with the steps of
collecting, analysing and interpreting the data. These are majorly of two types: Inductive and
Deductive. Inductive approaches help in generating new theories which can be emerged from the
data while on the other hand the deductive approaches help in testing the theory which is made
by making use of inductive approach. The inductive approach basically goes with the qualitative
type of data while the deductive approach goes with the quantitative type of data (Alase, 2017).
In this research of the social workers and their stress, inductive approach will be used as there is
no major or relevant theory which can be tested instead there are various concepts through which
theory can be developed. Therefore, the roles and responsibilities of the social workers for
interacting with the children will help in developing of a major theory along with achieving most
of the objectives.
Philosophy: The research philosophy deals with the belief in which data of a specific
phenomenon is collected, analysed and then used in the research. The research philosophy is
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broadly categorised into two types: Interpretivism and Positivism. Interpretivism approach is
basically based on the naturalistic approach of data gathering such as observations and
interviews while the positivism approach is based on the quantifiable observations which lead to
statistical analysis (Žukauskas, Vveinhardt and Andriukaitienė, 2018). The current research will
be based on the interpretivism approach because this research will be done by qualitative
methods. This is not based on the statistics and also in the current research there is not much use
of statistics. This is why, this philosophy can be used to gain in-depth insights about the topic
i.e., managing the stress of the social workers who interact with children.
Design: Research design is considered as the broad plan which is focussed on the research
objectives and also provides guidelines about what needs to be done for achieving the objectives
of the research. This can also be considered as the master plan which helps to execute the
research project. There are various different types of research design such as explanatory,
experimental, descriptive and many more. This research will make use of descriptive design
which lays emphasis on describing the problem and also finding the solution (Tobi and Kampen,
2018). This is used in the current research because the objectives can only be achieved by
describing the problem through various methods and gaining deeper insights of the same. The
stress which is faced by the social care workers which impacts their mental health can be studies
by going through various sources which helps in describing the topic as well as gaining more
information regarding the same. this will help in finding the solution which is moderators in this
case which can help in reducing the stress and enhancing the mental health.
Data collection: This deals in gathering or collecting the data which is related to the topic of the
research. This can be done in numerous ways including primary as well as secondary data
collection. Primary data collection deals in collecting the raw data in the first hand form by
directing collecting from the respondents while the secondary data collection deals in collecting
the already collected data from the secondary sources (Clark and Vealé, 2018). The primary data
can be collected through interviews, questionnaires, surveys etc. while the secondary data is
collected through sources like publications, online articles, websites, books, journals,
government websites etc. In this current investigation of the mental health of social workers,
secondary data collection will be performed in which the qualitative data will be collected from
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secondary resources which will be presented in the literature review for critical analysis. This
will help in collecting much relevant information which can help in answering the research
questions.
Data Analysis: This process in the research methodology helps in analysing the data which is
gathered from various sources primary or secondary. There are majorly two ways of analysing
the data which can be SPSS or thematic. SPSS methods or tools are used for analysing the
quantitative data while the thematic analysis methods are used for analysing the qualitative data.
In this research, the qualitative data is collected and used which is why thematic analysis will be
used as data analysis strategy (Moser and Korstjens, 2018). Various themes will be developed on
the basis of the objectives of the research. These themes will help in gaining the information
separately which can make the process of analysing the data easier and efficient.
This is how, the research methods will be used for carrying out the research project for
facilitating the social workers which will help in reducing their stress and improving their mental
health.
Literature review
Stress related to work settings caseloads funds to the local authorities
As per the views of Baginsky, Manthorpe and Hickman, (2019) Children's social workers
in their second and third years in the job are very stressful, with multiple thirds announcing
worries over stress levels. By practice region, social workers are working with wellbeing and in
child in need and child security work were the most stressed, many workers who are working in
the two controls has confessed to feel stressed. The study has tracked down that the important
reasons for pressure among social workers was responsibility which are high and feeling they
were being approached to satisfy such a large number of various parts in their work. Some of the
social workers start to feel more negative about the job once they moved out of the Assessed and
Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) and have experiencing a greater amount of the truth of
the work regarding responsibility pressing factors and official work.
The test presumed that there is a need to find how to all the more likely help the change out of
ASYE into experienced expert parts to help maintenance and create flexibility. normally
speaking, the most famous reason for stress at work was a lot office work. This was trailed by
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having high number of cases as well, so they are not getting time to work with children and
families, working society/practices, and absence of assets to help families. Baginsky and
Manthorpe, (2020) discussed that Forefront employees who had been in child and friendly work
for some years would in general be less fulfilled on a scope of measure. children health plays
vital role for SW. social workers said they felt respected by their manager. While expanded time
went through with an association, and better rating, were both decidedly connected with feeling
faithful to their managers, they were contrarily connected with the degree to which social
workers felt esteemed.
High caseload was the most widely recognized reason for needing to leave followed by the
measure of desk work and general working hours. as job satisfaction is major thing and that the
children and families we work with esteem in their social workers. It is good that over portion of
the social workers reviewed feel esteemed by their managers, that some don't is disturbing. It is
important for the social workers feel esteemed, very much upheld in their job and have basic
responsibilities so they can invest more time with children and families making good and
enduring changes in their lives. Local authorities are using the restricted resources to urge more
individuals to pick the option of social work as a profession and to make them need to remain.
great social work can and changes lives and also influence the society positively. Malesza,
(2021) views are Social workers get stress after handling children and this stress sometimes
comes out on local authorities. SW even take care of children at time of covid19
Stress is related with both short and long term medical issues. From one perspective, it can
contribute quickly to weakness by advancing damaging behaviours. On the other, ongoing
pressure is known to create metabolic changes identifying with cholesterol levels, obesity and an
expanded danger of coronary illness, just as having other thump on impacts like depression and
more poorer immune capacity. It's hence critical to recognize the wellbeing dangers of social
work, a profession that has for quite some time been related with stress, depression and burnout.
The cognitive perspective:
Cognitive psychology has emerged which focuses on mental health like memory, problem
solving, decision making, thinking etc. While working whole day with children and handling
typical cases stress in social workers increases. Because of stress they sometimes irritated for no
reason. So social workers should do exercise to relax their mind and so to take complex
decisions.
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Resilience and supervision
According to Rose and Palattiyil, (2020) resilience means the recognizable proof of the
exceptional gathering conditions expected to make a safe space. The collaboration of care based
stress decrease works out. An focus on the enthusiastic frameworks inspiring the reaction to a
circumstance. Social workers need training or supervision so that they can conquer stress and
also helpful in solving problems which comes with children. Its a well known fact that social
work is a important position. Jobs have expanded because of high demand, feelings of anxiety
among the work force have raised and thus, this has set a strain on the harmony between work-
life balance. Overseeing stress both at work and at home when the working day is done takes
persistence and practice. At some point when you've had a bad day, it's barely noticeable the
specific circumstance which made you feel bad. After the pressure trigger has been given, you
could feel like all that you do thereafter is overpowering and adding to how you feel, despite the
fact that these assignments as a rule cause no comparable impact on different days. Figure out
how to mitigate stress from different errands by causing a note of when you began to feel stress
and what ended up causing that. Brain has made a Wellness Action Plan which will help you
map out these stressors.
After you've perceived which conditions covert good day into the bad day, set up an arrangement
to make sure that you're ready for them. This is an stress the board strategy. As a social worker,
unpleasant circumstances might be an aspect of your responsibilities, supplant the fear of
confronting it with acknowledgment. Dai, Zhuang and Huan, (2019) said that Training yourself
to realize that it's unavoidable will assist you to adapt to it when it emerges later on. Supervision
should be provided to them. Businesses ought to have strategies to remove staff stress, including
effective supervision and support, giving adequate existence, so workers can consider their
training. Intelligent practice empowers qualified social workers to take in exercises from their
training, study themselves and discover useful ways forward. Moreover, discover approaches to
talk about issues, issues and surprisingly uplifting news with administrators. Approachable
managers make life simpler, yet something else, have a go at conversing with partners or other
confided in experts.
Assemble and maintain resilience by having somebody to converse with. This could be a partner,
however regardless of whether it is a companion who thinks nothing about your work, it is useful
just to talk things through, offload, or essentially share your day. You don't need to utilize your
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