Do you worry about burnout? Community Care launches study

As part of our Stand Up For Social Work Campaign, Community Care has launched what we hope will be the largest investigation of social worker burnout in the UK.

Community Care has commissioned Paula McFadden of Queen’s University, Belfast, to help us design the survey and analyse the results. McFadden has already undertaken studies of burnout amongst child protection social workers in Northern Ireland.

This article is part of Community Care’s Stand up for Social Work campaign. We’re standing up for social work by being honest, offering support and providing inspiration.

Stress levels are rising

Our annual stress surveys have shown stress levels increasing year on year. In 2014 over 2000 social workers responded to our survey and more than 80% said they felt unable to do their jobs properly because of the stress caused by increasing demand, rising vacancy levels and unmanageable caseloads.

Yet these surveys are often dismissed in some quarters as a self-selecting, unscientific representation of the problem.

This time we are using the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a globally recognised, scientific measure of burnout across the caring professions. It will be analysed against key demographic information such as caseloads and levels of supervision.

Scientific proof of the problem

We hope it will be one of the largest studies of its kind and will help educate ministers, MPs, employers and senior managers on the extent of burnout amongst the profession and the dangers this presents for service users.

Participation is entirely voluntary. However, in order to gain accurate results we would urge all social workers to take part, even if you do not feel you are suffering the effects of burnout.

Please read the participant information before you access and answer the questions, in order to give your consent to taking part in the study.

Once you have read the information, you can access the survey here.

You can find help and information on burnout and improving your emotional resilience in our free downloadable guide written by experts.

Answers are confidential

All information from the survey is completely confidential and answers cannot be linked back to you.

Stand Up For Social Work and help us create the largest scientific study of social worker burnout. Only with hard evidence can we hope to change the working lives of social workers.

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