In the briefing, entitled Building emotional resilience in the children and families workforce – an evidence-informed approach, Professor Gail Kinman and Dr Louise Grant argue that it is not just up to individual practitioners to develop coping strategies to deal with their stressful job – managers need to put policies in place to support their workforce.

“Social workers and family support workers have an extremely stressful job that is emotionally demanding. With sickness and retention problems affecting the whole sector, we need to look at ways to help social workers keep working,” said Prof Kinman.

The briefing was published by Research in Practice which aims to improve the lives of children, families and adults by supporting the children services practitioners in their everyday work.

The briefing applies the evidence gathered by Prof Kinman and Dr Grant from years of research with social workers to the wider child and family workforce. 

Kinman and Grant’s work has examined how building resilience can help social workers cope with the stresses of the job, but their own wellbeing needs to be a priority if they want to continue in the profession long term. 

On average a social worker only remains in the job for just eight years.

The briefing gives practical guidance to strategic managers of the children and families' workforce, allowing them to support their employees as they carry out an emotionally stressful job.

A key part of this is ensuring that practitioners recognise the need to prioritise their own emotional wellbeing. For social workers and family support workers this means right at the start of their education, and throughout their careers after they have qualified.

“For social workers and family support workers to thrive in social work practice they need support from effective team managers and an organisation that values the wellbeing of their staff,” said Dr Grant.

 “We need to see some changes at every level of the profession. Managers need to make the emotional wellbeing of their workforce a priority and take it seriously. It is not fair to assume the individual can be emotionally resilient without support,” said Prof Kinman.

“By nature social workers and family support workers are dedicated to caring for others, but often forget to take care of themselves. The importance of considering their own emotional wellbeing needs to be drummed into them from the very beginning.”