Building EMotional Resilience for Practice

1. Building EMotional Resilience for Practice Hereford CC Practice Educator Forum 23.11.16 Pete Ayling

2. Session outcomes Identify strategies for managing challenges of current practice and promoting wellbeing Reflect on the role of emotions within our practice. Explore sources of satisfaction and motivation as a source of strength for future practice Consider how emotional resilience can be sustained at a personal, group and organisational level

3. Why do this now? Burnout In Social work McFadden 2015 Commissioned by Community Care 1359 participants. Online survey - 3 sub scales 91 % scored moderate / high for emotional exhaustion scale 62% scored moderate / high for de-personalisation (a lack of caring for service users) scale HOWEVER 91% also scored high/ moderate for personal accomplishment (feelings of competence and success) How do we explain this?

4. Practice tensions Relationship based approaches Empowerment of service user Human rights Values led Self -Reflection Developmental supervision Use of Empathy Technical -rational approaches Bureaucracy process led Outcome focused KPI’s & Time scales. Performance focus Case management Interventionist ‘It is the uniqueness of each individual's situation that pushes social work beyond a simple process of issue identification and solution’ ( Phung cited in Ingram 2015)

5. Defining concepts: Emotional labour ( Hochschild 1983) – way in which workers present and manage their emotions / behaviour due to their role. - experience conflict between what they feel and what is required - Hochschild suggests we train ourselves to act in certain ways underpinned by a set of rules about emotion Bolton & Boyd 2002 – argue we find ways of balancing organisational demands with professional values about emotions.

6. Newly Qualified social workers – managing feelings (Ayling & Williams forthcoming) ‘And I do tend to speak to a few people, to get it off your chest and that, but…everyone’s just in exactly the same boat. You speak to people and you just feel their pain as much as you feel yours really.’ ‘….. at times I have got angry, at times I have cried. And sometimes you’ve just got to go with how you feel at that time, and get it out, and then find a way to get past that.’ ‘Because you go home, and you’re worried about them, and I must admit, I’ve been alright up until now, but the past two nights, I’ve actually found myself waking up, worrying about them’ “go into the toilet, lock yourself in, scream, cry and then come out again”

7. What are we avoiding… Barlow & Hall (2007) – new practitioners reluctant to share emotions for fear of being judged incompetent feelings of vulnerability in supervisory relationships, unsupportive culture. Dwyer (2007) & Ruch (2012) describe use of processes as collective defence mechanisms Avoidance of negative emotions such as fear, distress Use of concrete measurements and indicators to minimise uncertainty culture of blame which minimises human complexity. …..FEELINGS ARE MESSY

8. Hardiness (Collins 2008) Sturdy Tenacious Committed Bold adaptable Energetic

9. Grant & Kinman (2014) - Emotional Resilience Refining the concept over a number of years. Cites Masters (2001) – ‘ordinary magic’ Initially seen as quality of recovery from adversity, ‘bouncing back’ Now viewed as a more universal, inter-active and dynamic process ‘successful adaptation to every day events rather than unusual ones, emerges from ordinary human capabilities’ (Grant & Kinman 2015)

10. Grant & Kinman 2014 Consensus emerging about qualities that build resilience: Emotional literacy/ intelligence Reflective ability Empathy Effective Social skills Support networks Optimism, positive re-framing, problem solving skills – seeing solutions, rather than barriers. REFLECT: How do you rate yourself on these qualities currently?

11. Emotional Intelligence defined ‘Being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope’ (Daniel Goleman, 1996).

12. Tony Morrison (2007) “practitioners need to make sense of not only the meaning of emotions in others, but equally the meaning of emotions in themselves, in order to make and interpret observations” (2007 p 255)

13. Empathy defined: “ the capacity to enter into the feelings and experiences of another, to understand what the other is experiencing as if you were the other, to stand back from your own self and identity in the process” ( Seden 2005) “A willingness to imagine and in that imagining, experience, some of the pain or difficulty of the service user” (Healy 2012)

14. Empathy as Emotional armour: Kinman & Grant (2014) suggest empathy needs to be semi permeable – allows emotional connection with service user, but provides boundary / distance from the distress felt by service user.

15. Empathy- Grant & Kinman 2014. ‘accurate empathy involves the maintenance of an emotional boundary between helping professionals and service users which provides protection from personal distress when sensitive information is shared’ Grant 2013.

16. Resilience Mapping (Adamson, Beddoe & Davys. 2014)

17. Organisational Context Ingram (2015) identifies need to balance the tension between organisational requirements and practice values Danger of workers only adopting ‘deficit’ model of organisation – leads to disempowerment and lack of hope. be critical while engaging with organisation & processes. How can we promote & develop a reflective learning culture at an organisational level?

18. Mediating Factors in organisations Grant & Kinman (2014) Clarity about role and duties Opportunities for autonomy and involvement Modelling openness and emotional intelligence individual /group supervision to support staff wellbeing and emotional literacy Use of peer coaching and mentoring to support personal development Opportunities for mindfulness ( practicing calm) and creativity individually and as a team nurturing positivity by learning from successes

19. Sources of Wellbeing in Social work Graham & Shier (2010) identified increased sense of wellbeing derived from: - range of work opportunities – variety of roles & diversity of experience. - Accepting professional limitations Some level of role autonomy and choice Access to sources of professional support Opportunities for career development Belief in social work values and ethics Sense of personal accomplishment and contribution.

20. ‘Flow’ - noticing what we do well Csikszentmihalyi (1992) coined the term ‘FLOW’ to describe state of optimal performance - feeling of effectiveness and contentment Using skills and knowledge to maximum effect, Feeling ‘ in the zone’ – unconscious competence Focused and effortless Unconsciously using skills to respond to challenge Stretches us beyond our usual experience Grant & Kinman (2014) use the term ‘sparkling moments’

21. Thriving in Social work WENDT et al (2011) distinguish between strategies to SURVIVE and those to THRIVE • Thriving requires: • Pleasure and enjoyment from the role • Challenge and varied workload • Confidence in professional role and experience. • Belief that work made a difference to service users • Commitment to larger cause e.g.social justice • Surviving requires: • Boundaries around professional life • Work –life balance • Knowing limitations of professional role • not setting self up as rescuer.

22. Personal Accomplishment & Satisfaction Stalker et al (2007) identify sense of personal accomplishment as key for longevity in social work practice. Supported by passionate belief in value base and human rights Confidence in the contribution of social work as a profession. Ability to focus on personal development and success at relationship building rather than measure ‘success’ by simply outcomes Acceptance of limitations of role

23. “ we make mistakes, we learn, we reflect and we go on and we’re hopefully better than what we did last time”, Let’s hear from those newly qualified workers again…. ‘I switch off. I don’t know how I do it …. As soon as I get out of that door, as soon as I get home, it's gone. I don’t know how I've managed to do that, I just do it.’ ‘accepting that, as well meaning as I might be, as committed as I might be, I trained to be a social worker not a miracle worker, and I can’t do everything for everybody.’ ‘I need to do the hours I get paid for and do as much as I can in those hours and then I need to treat myself to a break and to make sure that I sit down and have my time, my family time’

24. References Adamson, C Beddoe, L & Davys, A(2014) Building Resilient Practitioners: Definitions and Practitioner Understandings in BJSW Vol. 44 p 522-541 Barlow, C & Hall, B (2007) What about feelings? A Study of emotion and tension in social work field education. In Social work Education. Vol 26:4 p399 – 413 Collins, S (2008) Statutory Social Workers: Stress, Job Satisfaction, Coping, Social Support and Individual Differences. In BJSW Vol 38 p 1173 - 1193 Csikszentmihalyi, M (2008) Flow: the psychology of happiness. Kondon: Random House. Goleman, D.(1996) Emotional Intelligence. London: Bloomsbury. Graham, J R & Shier,M L ( 2010) The Social work Profession and subjective wellbeing. BJSW Vol 40 p 1553 -1572 Grant, L & Kinman, G (2014) Developing Resilience for Social work practice Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hochschild, A R (2012) The Managed Heart . Los Angeles. University of California Press. Ingram, R. (2015) Unerstanding Emotion in Social work. Maidenhead: Open University Press McFadden, P (2015) Measuring burnout among UK Social workers: A Community Care study. Available atttps://www.communitycare.co.uk/datacaptureform/download-community-cares-research-on-social-worker-burnout-july-2015-register/ Morrison, T. (2007) Emotional Intelligence; Emotion and social work: Context, Characteristics complications and contribution. In BJSW vol.37 P245 -263 Ruch, G (2012) Where have all the feelings Gone? In BJSW Vol 42. p 1315 -1332 Stalker, C A et al (2007) Child welfare workers who are exhausted yet satisfied with their jobs: how do they do it? I Child and Family Social work. Vol 12. p182 -191 Wendt,S, Tuckey M & Prosser, B (2011) Thriving, not just surviving in emotionally demanding fields of practice’ in Health and Social care in the community. Vol 19(3) p 317 - 325