A recent article (July 2025) in Community Care magazine instanced the stories of three social workers, whose view of the support they received from within their practice setting as a social worker forms the basis of their stories. The stories vary but are anyway all instructive if read carefully. Note here my care in not saying the ‘support they received from within the social work profession’.
Social workers may always (and I know as I speak from my own experience and that of others that even this is not true) be managed by other trained social workers with professional registration, but even then that manager will be receiving input directly from the employer-body (and that can be in the statutory – usual local councils in Britain, the voluntary or the private sector) that is determined by other motives entirely than the protection of social work service users, let alone those who work with those people; sometimes motives as raw as ‘improving intervention success measure ratings’ (which I have seen anyway being manipulated – in full consciousness that it was manipulation – in a council I won’t name) or even the ‘profit’ motive – sometimes even in the voluntary sector. Some of the stories in the magazine hype up the role of sensitive social work informed management. Take this case (not the one cited in my title) but from a worker who at time of report is himself a social work team manager, Andrew Gambrill, who fell ill on failing (as even he begins to see it) to manage his caseload:
I phoned in sick and told my manager it was for my mental health, which felt like a massive step for me. But the response I got from her was incredible. She called me the next day and arranged a meeting.
Right away, she said, “I can see you’ve got too many cases”. Even beyond that, she said: “Even if it’s not about the cases, if this is how you’re feeling, then I recognise that. Let’s keep you working, rather than letting it get to the point where you crash.”
She reviewed my caseload with me and helped break things down, saying: “Here’s what you can do today. Here’s what can wait until tomorrow. And here’s what can wait until next week.”
Hearing someone actually say “this can wait” was powerful. I knew it, but having someone else give me that permission was validating. I felt heard, recognised, and treated like a human being, not just a worker who needs to get things done.
It was really that simple. When I later became a manager myself, I always remembered that. The biggest takeaway was this: keep someone working, even if it’s just at half their capacity.
She helped me find that middle ground. If you’re only able to work at 25%, that’s still better than going off sick completely. It gives you space to recover gradually. Previously, I had to take six weeks off, and returning after that was a huge step.
Now no doubt Andrew is a sincere and caring man but the advice “this can wait” is neither unusual nor rare in the profession. It is a simple answer to the social work caseload overload problem by the principles of what social work trainers and teachers (I was one myself) call ‘time management’ and ‘prioritising’. What is missed out of the account (here as well as in my experience) is any consultation (or co-production or collaboration in the jargon) with the service user whose case is being stepped down from a schedule already agreed. And I almost weep when I hear the profession’s spokespersons say: “it really was that simple.” In the end, the profession here describes serving its own needs (and that too is necessary as we shall see) irrespective of the person at the receiving end of social work – the ‘end-user’ as business management has it.
Andrew ends his account with a rather chilling sentence:
It took me being seriously unwell twice to realise I needed to speak up. It’s still a huge step to say something. You don’t want to let your team or your manager down. But really, the only person you’re letting down by staying silent is yourself.
What I notice immediately is that it is only the professional team or its manager that is in danger of being let down. Shouldn’t any account start with the impact of social worker action or inaction on the person who, through no wish of their own often, has to accept services that compromise their independence and control over their own lives? And why end the account with a phrase that is rooted in self-blame: ‘the only person you’re letting down by staying silent is yourself‘. And time-management and prioritising techniques are rooted in that principle. I have often been told as a worker that self-care was the only route to the care and support of others. And, in some ways, this is true, but only in some cases – in more cases self-care often leads to neglect of the care, support and safety of others and this is never stated. What is good in this advice is best spoken by another experienced worker (now a ‘consultant’ and thus outside the employer’s non-social work agenda, Richard Devine): ‘The hardest part, I think, is admitting to yourself that you’re struggling. That’s what took me the longest, giving myself permission to have this experience’. And Richard does not simply refer us to a manager, though his was good, but to any and other kinds of support to recognise and work through one’s struggles.
The quotation from my title is from a worker who does not give her name and who seems in the process of assisted exit from the profession. Yet her experience is nearer to the majority of mine, even in semi-management work roles or as a social work leader in a university. The advice she was given was given to me by a senior person in BASW, who I turned to for help – rather than turned to, as in years before, to pay my fees. Here is a taste of her account, following leaving one post where she had not been supported (and her case is not rate and she did consult her manager):
It was months later that I decided to come back. I wasn’t quite ready to give up. I thought: “Okay, I’ll try again. Maybe with a different organisation, a different local authority.”
‘Practitioners are scared to say how they truly feel’
It’s bearable now. However, in a recent supervision meeting, I mentioned some of my struggles and my manager responded by asking if I’d looked into whether I could live on benefits. I was absolutely appalled.
Honestly, I probably won’t say anything again until I find another job. What’s the point?
I think in our field, practitioners are scared to say how they truly feel. So they keep struggling until things get really bad.
There’s this underlying belief that if you’re a social worker, you should just handle the pressure. If you can’t, then maybe you’re not cut out for the job.
I don’t need hand-holding. But I’m tired of starting new jobs and not being met with basic humanity. I just want someone to listen. That’s all I need.
And this remains a truth. Usually this is because managers, even in social work, look upwards to secure their own position in a management hierarchy rather than consult principles of care and support, even those statutory ones governing service in legislation and practice guidance. One manager who I worked with (and this problem is worse in mental health teams as this was) was eventually stripped of registered status by the social work regulator, though not on my complaint (her reputation followed her but was supported by every employer up to that point – NHS MH Foundation and Local Council- she had ably blocked my chances of that because at the time I was an agency worker). My sin, by the way, was advocating for the service user in a mental health tribunal and not the management position as dictated by the psychiatrist.
Now the account above is sad but is still only about ‘all I need’. There may be no ‘I’ in team (another cliche oft turned against advocating social workers) but there is an ‘i’ in ‘service user’, ‘client’ and ‘patient’, whichever term, your employer enforces, with or without co-production consultation, and that is the ‘I’ that needs to be respected if social work is ever to regain its status (which might involved a government unlike our present one who gives a damn about the protection of the vulnerable, even when (as it must) the profession need to act against that I’s wishes – as in family safeguarding is often the case.
Amongst the responses to the article, most showed that the experience in the last account were not unusual but were growing in frequency under the current constraints on social care – so neglected by successive governments. This one is from someone retiring in two years who ‘can’t wait’. Now this person cannot be accused of not being resilient or not using her social work training, but the saddest part is the part bolded, who even sees the argument of ‘client-focus’ as a mask for selfish motives underlying its use as an argument.
All of these accounts resonate with my experiences. All I want to say is that most social workers are really not thatcompassionate pr (sic) supportive of each other. Aside from the sheer competitiveness of ‘proving’ as an individual how resilient they are, how much harder they work than their colleagues, how client focused they are and so on, they see anyone struggling as potentially causing them more work. So they ignore colleagues at best or are just plain nasty. I yearn for the days of true team work where taking care of each other was routine and the tiniest bit of kindness wasn’t so performative in essence. Retiring in two years. Can’t wait.
And sadder still is that service-user focus is not seen as a responsibility of the whole team, where mutual support of each other spreads capacity, and resistance to overwhelming case loads, which make service user focus impossible without prioritising one over another. Whilst prioritising matters, of course (especially in relation to safeguarding issues), it too often is also the most used mask for failing to even listen to marginalised users of services and is a lever for causing more marginalisation.
Despite all this, I still revere social work, though I have residual worries about the role of the term ‘professional’ to bolster power issues. Its’s a mess isn’t it.
But I am retired. So what do I know?
With love
Steven xxxxxx
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