‘I find myself holding people’s anxiety to boost morale’

Published by Professional Social Work Magazine, 13 February 2023

The week starts, as most weeks do, with me working at home online. Since I am at home most of the week, I have taken to turning off the main central heating and working in one room with an oil filled radiator to save money.

It is a particularly cold week with snow forecast. In the first meeting the commissioning lead apologises for wearing a bright bobble hat and another confesses to wearing fingerless gloves to work meetings. The housing lead pops online wearing his bobble hat too – he is in a meeting room on site which seems just as cold as everyone’s home is.

We discuss the council and health budgets - already shaved to the bone but we still need savings to break even and not spend all our reserves next year.

Since Covid (we seem to talk in terms of “before Covid” and “after Covid” nowadays) many people were initially opting to work at home. I see that during winter more people are choosing to come into the office but are finding it hard to get a space, as some of the buildings remain closed to save money. 

This has caused hardships, including for people using our services who were used to presenting at certain offices nearer to them and now need to access a lot of things online or further away.

The day turns greyer and icier and the cold is the topic of every meeting we have today. In the next call a manager with young children tells me that she turns the heating off once the children are at school and works with a blanket round her, yet her bills were over £400 last month. We all talk about how we are so looking forward to spring and hope it won’t be a cold one.

 We have a big recruitment drive to fill our social work vacancies, but this is yielding mainly newly qualified staff, who would be great if we weren’t desperate for people with lots of experience, as our caseloads are often complex and need legal input. The teams just don’t have the time to support lots of inexperienced staff.

In the next meeting a team manager tells me that another social worker has resigned today and is going to join an agency as she cannot make ends meet and they pay better. I remind her that there will be no sick pay or holiday pay in an agency role so the person should be aware of that when making the decision.

I look at our sickness levels and note that some people have slipped onto long-term sickness for stress – we can’t afford to lose them and they surely cannot afford to go onto half pay. I ring a team manager and we discuss some ideas of how to support someone back to work. Is there somewhere less stressful to go to initially? Probably unlikely.

I find a lot of my time is spent ‘holding’ people’s anxiety and stress in an effort to boost morale – I know that the team managers are doing the same. We want to try to keep our brilliant staff who I know work over hours to try and meet service and performance demands for the looming CQC inspection process.

I have the next call with the manager of emergency duty services who tells me that over the last year demand has shifted from the majority children’s issues to many more calls from adults who are really not managing financially or emotionally.

Our mental health AMHP calls are increasing too but it is difficult to manage these since the beds are mostly full across the trust footprint and the wards are reporting an increase in Covid and severe respiratory problems – some people becoming end of life due to these. Covid doesn’t appear to be ended at all. 

The AMHP service gate-keeps ‘Breathing Space’ – the debt service for people who are in mental health crisis. But we have minimal referrals to this which appears to be a national trend, despite the trust and our council widely publicising this as an option which can offer a lifeline to people struggling with debt.

Citizens Advice tell us that they are swamped with people asking for debt advice and using food banks and our household support fund is used by many adults and families. Our laptop backgrounds show numbers on how to access support for staff facing difficulties and for the people they work with.

Next up is our funding discussions – have we used the least restrictive options for people and accessed universal services first? Well, I am sure our voluntary sector, who have seen some of their funding cut over the last few years, would love to provide more - but we are cutting unthinkable things at the moment, so the options are limited.

We have so many older carers now who are struggling to cope with a partner with dementia when there’s less and less available by way of day services and NHS support. I speak to an NHS colleague who says they are in the same boat with recruitment – and running with high vacancies. 

We have people who need discharge from hospital. Another emergency has been declared at the local hospital and we have no providers for homecare. Hospital social workers bear the brunt of family complaints about getting people home.

Our brokerage team is working flat out to try and find support for people and keep providers on board. They finally manage to find some support to start after the weekend.

I reflect on the day and wonder why I am doing this work – I didn’t come into the job to balance books and focus on funds and processes and answer the increasing amount of complaints to do with waiting lists for allocations.

It’s past 6pm and I’m still logged on. A social worker rings me and reports back on a visit to someone who was previously not letting anyone in. She has finally got in and found the person has no food and heating and wants to change the situation.

I am so proud of the social worker’s achievement. She says that the person’s doorbell was broken and that is mainly why the person didn’t ever answer the door! A couple of batteries have sorted it – I wish that it was that easy a solution for us in social care at the moment.