The Chartered Institute of Management said today that social care staff are putting in too many hours for too few returns with 87 per cent of managers in the social care sector regularly work over their contracted hours.

The average manager works 1 hour 18 minutes over contract each day – equivalent to roughly 40 days per year. Not surprisingly, only 1 in 5 work excess hours by choice.  Most in social care do so to meet deadlines or because of the volume of work they face.

The survey was directed at managers but it seems unlikely that the same issues do not affect frontline social workers with their heavy caseloads.

I know a child protection social worker who does crazy hours - way beyond her requirement and has been on the edge of a breakdown for the past five years. why dont managers pick up on this and give people proper supervision

That is terrible! Is it the case load or paper work or a combination as I get the impression that it's administration that grinds people down and prevents them doing the face to face work with clients?

I think it was the combination of really high caseload with very chaotic kids, a bully of a manager and intense court report deadlines that caused this social worker to work crazy hours. also I think one of the problems was that she was also over conscientious and ethically-driven - could never do enough for the kids and lost sleep over it. Those are undoubted personal assets that made her stand out as a social worker but I think without proper management and supervision these assets become a road to a breakdown. Overall, the fact her manager was a bully and she was poorly supervised led to this situation where she clocked up hundreds of hours of TOIL but never even took them. This is the fastest way to burnout. What can be done?

I am a SW working working within Child Protection and the hours that i do are unbelievably long, however i am not the only one.  It seems that there is an expected culture that Social Workers will work above and beyond what they are contracted to do.  Most of the time that i work over is due to administration, when you have CP cases, Permenancy work (CPR's) and proceedings all at the same time you need to be in the office at 0730 working well passed 630pm only to work at home when you finally get back.

My manager is well aware of the hours that i put in but i am never given any special consideration.  Again i must stress that i am not playing the martyr here, most hard working SW's in my team do the exact same.

Hi SW

I have to say those hours sound exhausting and it must be a nightmare to have to turn round and do more work when you get home.

I was interesting to hear whether you get time off in lieu at all for any overtime that you do? Do you have any administration support at work?

It sounds very similar to teaching to me. My mother is a teacher and loves the teaching aspect of it, but again the administration side of her job means she leaves the house at 7 20am to return at 6pm only to cook a meal before marking books until 10pm at night.

I have to say it's no surprise that there is a social work shortage in child protection if you have all that pressure anyway and are then expected to do crazy hours. It si also quite shocking that many social workers are put in this situation and expected to get on with it.

Ed