February 2012 Archives

by Mark Drinkwater, mental health social worker and Community Care practice adviser

 
Video resources 
 
Coping with stress
 
Stress
 
Coping with redundancy
 
Mental health: a selection of videos by NHS Choices
 
Doing good feels good - Action for Happiness
 
The importance of kindness and relationships - Action for Happiness
 
Managing Stress - BBC video
 
Stressed out at work?

Take the NHS Stress Test to help you identify your stressors: 
 
Guides on stress at work
 
ACAS stress at work guide

HSE: Working together to reduce stress at work guide (pdf) 

Unison Scotland and SASW - Keeping safe in the workplace: A Guide for Social Work Practitioners 

Community Care Inform has a range of invaluable expert-written guides to stress, including:

Managing stress - a manager's guide

Guide to compassion fatigue and secondary trauma in human services

Guide to working with emotion: A practice educator perspective

Guide to effective supervision: What is it and how can supervisors ensure they provide it?

Not an Inform user?

Visit www.ccinform.co.uk or call Kim Poupart on 0208 652 4848 to find out more about Inform 

Books to help you tackle stress

Stress Proof Your Life

Finding Flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life 

Stress at work and how to reduce it 

Handbook of Stress in the Occupations

Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer 

Change the World for a Fiver: We are What We Do  

Useful websites
 
ACAS
 
Action for Happiness

BBC stress site
 
HSE
 
Mind 

Net Doctor 

NHS
 
Random Acts of Kindness
 
Stress Management Society
 
Unison (pdf)

Click here to return to Mental Health Social Work and Stress: Practice Guide

by Mark Drinkwater, a mental health social worker and Community Care practice adviser

1. Identify the cause of your stress

The first step is to identify the cause of your stress. Take a few deep breaths and try to think about what is making you feel that way. Only then will you be in a position to tackle the causes and see what you might be able to change.
 
2. Take control of your stress

Stress won't go away on its own. A feeling of a loss of control will exacerbate you stress. If you feel you have too little control over your work, insist on having a supervision session with your line manager where you can address this together. 
 
3. Focus on the positives

Negative thinking contributes to stress. Reflect on the positives in your life and get in the habit of celebrating your successes.

Remember the Louis Armstrong song: When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. 
 
4. Connect with people

It's good to talk and connecting with others can help us relax. Actively seek out the support of your colleagues. Likewise, having the support of family and friends can help you through difficult situations at work. 
 
5. Manage your time

Managing your time allows you to prioritise your workload effectively. Resist the urge to take work home with you and accept that you will always have to leave some work for tomorrow.
 
6. Think of others

It might sound odd suggesting to social workers to think of other people. But there is plenty of evidence that helping others makes you feel better about yourself - so you might want to try out some of the great ideas on the Random Acts of Kindness website or check out this video.
 
7. Avoid unhealthy coping strategies

Don't rely on smoking or alcohol as a way of dealing with stress. These just provide temporary relief and do not help you tackle the source of your stress.
 
8. Challenge yourself

Set yourself new goals and challenges. Learning a language or trying a new fitness exercise will help you gain a sense of achievement, which can increase your emotional resilience.
 
9. Find some time for yourself

Social workers are renowned for working long hours. That extra time at work means that you aren't socialising with friends. It's worth setting aside regular nights in the week where you commit to spending time with friends or family, rather than being tempted to stay late at the office.

10. Get some exercise

Build regular exercise into your daily routine. Working out at the gym or going for a run can help you unwind. It might even get in the right state to identify solutions to your stressful situation.

11. Change your perceptions

There are things you will find you are unable to change. If you can't change something, then maybe you can change your perception of it. 
 
12. Learn to relax

Learn some relaxation techniques such as muscle relaxation or mindfulness meditation. These require practice but are proven methods of coping with stressful situations.

 

Expert practice advice for social workers

Community Care Inform has a range of invaluable expert-written guides to stress, including:

Managing stress - a manager's guide

Guide to compassion fatigue and secondary trauma in human services

Guide to working with emotion: A practice educator perspective

Guide to effective supervision: What is it and how can supervisors ensure they provide it?

Not an Inform user?

Visit www.ccinform.co.uk or call Kim Poupart on 0208 652 4848 to find out more about Inform

Click here to return to Mental Health Social Work and Stress: Practice Guide

 

by Victoria Hart, an approved mental health professional and social worker

One of the most important skills a social worker learns in practice is resilience. It is not a matter that can easily be taught. Everyone has different ways of learning and extending their own boundaries based not only on work experience but life experience and as with many of the issues that face us when we work with people in crisis, we have to find our own ways of learning, reflecting and building our own resilience levels. 

All areas of social work offer their own challenges and stress factors. Working in mental health social work is no different. As a mental health social worker in a community mental health team the way you interact and input into a service user's life will be different to those social workers in other fields.

So why is mental health social work so stressful? I don't doubt that any other social workers would claim that 'their field' is the most stressful but this isn't a competition. Working with and alongside people with serious mental health difficulties place a social worker under particular stress and instil a particular notion of responsibility for care coordination which, mixed with the unpredictability of some of the responses to our work can lead to higher stress levels.

As an AMHP (approved mental health professional) there is an added stressor to the role in the form of Mental Health Act assessments. While they are only conducted when absolutely necessary as a 'last stage' response when all other treatment options have been exhausted, they do by their nature imply a coercive pressure to a service user which is often counter to many of our instincts as social workers.

Also in times when cuts are biting, it is increasingly difficult to strike an ethically acceptable balance between care and control.

So how is it best to manage stress and build resilience? There are no easy answers as often the responses are very personal. For me, I ensure that my outside interests are able to flourish. Having other strands to life outside work is vital as is having good supervision and good support from colleagues inside the work setting. Relying on evidence -based practice and building on and referring to theoretical frameworks is essential as a practitioner too. It reminds me why I am working in the way that I am and enables me to keep informed about current research and better ways of practising.

Having space to reflect on the work is vital as is being able to set boundaries between work and non-work. I take a lunch break every day. It isn't always at lunchtime and it isn't always to eat but I try to take a walk in the local park for at least 15 mins during the day to try to unpack some of the issues that I come up with during the day so I can think them through before I go home. 

Often we each need to find our own way, and that takes time to build up.

The important thing though is to find a way, however it comes, in order to do our best at our job - both for those who rely on the services and our judgement and for ourselves and our long term wellbeing.

(The lovely picture above is by Bhope34 on flickr) 

Click here to return to Mental Health Social Work and Stress: Practice Guide

by Mark Drinkwater, a mental health social worker and Community Care practice adviser

Recently I've been compiling some materials on stress management and have come across some useful resources emanating from happiness research. This growing area has generated a wealth of understanding about how individuals can avoid stress and live happier lives.

While happiness is not an absence of stress, there is evidence that there is a relationship between them. In 2009, a Gallup poll in the US found that those states with less stressed residents usually had happier residents.

However, there is resistance and distrust of some proponents of the happiness agenda - including David Cameron, who has suggested we measure our nation's happiness, and the economist Lord Layard who set up the movement Action for Happiness. The suspicion is that they are principally interested in deflecting interest from the country's precarious finances.

So, perhaps it's understandable happiness hasn't caught on in the workplace. Certainly it has proved unattractive to hardened social work managers. For instance, last year, a friend of mine enquired if he could attend a conference on understanding happiness, only to have his request turned down by his manager who said he wouldn't spend public money on staff "going on a jolly".

Happiness therefore has a bit of an image problem. It sounds a bit too fluffy to be taken seriously by social care professionals. However, we shouldn't dismiss the understanding that the happiness movement can offer to help us lead more effective lives.

The Action for Happiness website describes 10 behaviours for happier living (plus see video below).

The techniques they promote - including doing things for others, connecting with people and exercising regularly - are closely related to the stress management tips I have been researching. [[see stress management tips article]]

Some of the techniques may seem intuitive. But if they're that obvious, how come we work long hours at the expense of the relationships with our friends and families?

Making a conscious effort to embrace these behaviours has been shown to have a positive impact on people's overall happiness. They help us become more resilient and achieve a better balance in our lives - enabling us to be more productive at work. Perhaps more importantly, from a professional perspective, they also provide a better understanding of how to support service users who are themselves stressed.

Click here to return to Mental Health Social Work and Stress: Practice Guide

Yesterday's launch of The College of Social Work was high on enthusiasm and morale-boosting comments - for the profession and the college - and low on doubts and scepticism (as I blogged earlier, there was just one mention of BASW). That's perhaps as it should have been. But I came away thinking that we have a lot of expectations vested in the College and it will be a juggling act for it to fulfil each and every one of these.

Children's minister Tim Loughton set out the key aims of the College as driving up standards, improving public confidence in social work and providing a strong voice for the profession.

With a non-social work specific body - the Health Professions Council - taking over professional regulation of social work this year - General Social Care Council chair Rosie Varley said it was important for the College to step into the space vacated by the GSCC.

Many speakers said the College needed to be inclusive of all parts of the wider social care sector, particularly service users. In a passionate speech, social work lecturer and service user leader Peter Beresford said service user involvement had to run like a "stick of rock" through the organisation.

Unison's Helga Pile said she saw the College as a potential bridge between employers and employed social workers by being guardians of standards that both sides of the industrial divide could rally round.

Others wanted the College to lead a revival of what they saw as the social work values of the 1970s and 1980s - creativity, innovation - that they felt had been stifled by public service bureaucracy and targets.

All of these goals are valid in their own right. But this is quite a list for an organisation that has as yet no paying members, no chief executive and no permanent board.

It was left to Social Work Reform Board chair Moira Gibb to inject some caution into the proceedings by stressing that we must not load too much onto the College and that reviving the standing of social work was not solely the College's responsibility.

Hopefully, such common sense will prevail over the coming months as the College begins work. Given how long social work has waited for this moment, setting the organisation up to fail would be a big mistake.

(Image on Flickr from ElvertBarnes)