Self-care for Social Workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Self-care for Social Workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic

“Social workers are present in every location and every phase of human life,” said Carol S. Cohen, professor in the Adelphi University School of Social Work. “If someone is in distress or wants to talk to someone, it’s very likely that the first person in a professional capacity is going to be a social worker.”

Social workers are often uncelebrated heroes of the medical field. While the COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on their contributions, it has also increased demands on their services and their health.

While it can be difficult at a time like this, it is vital that as a social worker, you make yourself a priority. This is good for your own wellbeing, and ensures you are able to provide the best possible support to yourself, your family, people that use your services and our wider community.

Guidance for Individuals

Check in on yourself daily. If you don’t feel okay, identify why not, and any support/change required. This can be a helpful routine to get into, and can help you to monitor your wellbeing over the course of the pandemic.
Take days off. Taking time off will ensure that you are well-rested to be able to look after yourself and others.
Maintain a personal routine, including home hobbies, exercise, speaking to friends/family and sleep. Maintaining a work/life balance is also important in ensuring you can continue to support others.
Be flexible in your approach. For example, if you do not have access to the IT system, consider writing notes in word and uploading them later, and recognize that this is ok. If you try to do everything, there’s a possibility you may not succeed, and you may be setting yourself up to fail. Remember you are a trusted and trained professional working in rare circumstances, and can use your professional judgement when needed.
Ensure that you have a clear scope for your role, and say ‘no’ if you cannot take on more work. Some services will be overwhelmed or closed during this pandemic, and you should not be required to cover all of this additional work.
Identify a clear support system, both personally and professionally.

This can then be called upon as needed to ensure that you are not alone when you are having a tough minute/day/week.

Seek support if needed. Sharing openly about how working under these unusual circumstances is impacting on you is important, and can help others around you realize that everyone has to have their needs for support met. Ask your employer for debriefing and support about work dilemmas.
Take reflection time. If you haven’t written a reflective diary in a long time, now is the perfect time to revisit this practice. You are working under tough circumstances. Taking the time to think over the implications of this for you, your practice and those you support can help with processing this experience.
Ask questions if you are uncertain about anything. There will be doubtfulness, complexity and confusion at times, but asking questions can ensure that you clarify what is known and not known.
Restrict your exposure to news updates and social media opinions. While it can be important to stay up to date, it can also be overwhelming and discouraging to see the scale of events. Remember that it is perfectly ok to tune out. You are doing enough.
Request for debriefing and supervision. Recognize that your supervisor may be busy and stressed themselves, and they could inadvertently forget the importance of this without being reminded.
The appropriate use of humor in a supportive context should not be discounted, even in the current pandemic. Humor has shown time and time again to help sustain social workers and other professionals dealing with difficult circumstances, and can be an effective way of adding some humanity into what can seem at times to be inhumane circumstances.

Guidance for Teams

Be a supportive team. Social workers should not be required to take full responsibility for their self-care. Teams and managers need to be proactive in encouraging and facilitating self-care. Make it a mutual team effort: support others and be supported by them.
Consider developing a buddy system, whereby staff are paired with someone who they can specifically go to for peer-support. This can help ease pressure on managers as the single source of support, and ensure there is another place to go. While many social workers draw on peer support frequently, others are less able to or don’t have access. A pairing system ensures everyone has someone to turn to.
Support your staff with debriefing sessions.

These may need to be every day in some cases. Social workers who are dealing with rare risks and circumstances need to have access to guaranteed and supportive opportunities to discuss what they are going through.

Do not disregard the importance of supervision. Consider increasing the frequency of supervision, and developing a coordinated strategy to go along with debriefing.
Utilize team members who are self-isolating but symptomless and not supporting someone who is vulnerable. This can include these staff members providing online/phone debriefing sessions for those who need it, or being linked up as buddies to support those practicing daily by remote means. Ensure that staff adhere to the guidance on when to start/stop self-isolating.
Don’t overwhelm staff with information, guidance and emails. At a time like this, staff can become overwhelmed and overburdened with guidance, information, emails and policies, that can be confusing or even contradictory. Ensure staff have access to brief, accessible and clear information and advice.
Make it a requirement for staff to continue to take leave, sick days, days off and breaks.

Pressure to not take time off can build the more intense a crisis becomes. Staff should be required to take this time off, rather than encouraged to do so.

Support for home working. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published health and safety responsivities for home workers along with lone working and display screen equipment

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