Enhancing resilience in student and early-career social workers: evaluating multi-modal interventions

Research conducted in several countries has documented high levels of stress and burnout and retention difficulties amongst social workers. Although employers have a duty of care to safeguard the mental and physical health of... [ view full abstract ]

Research conducted in several countries has documented high levels of stress and burnout and retention difficulties amongst social workers. Although employers have a duty of care to safeguard the mental and physical health of their staff, it is widely recognised that social workers need to increase their emotional resilience to protect their personal wellbeing. Resilience also has important implications for other key outcomes such as retention and job performance. Little is known, however, about how resilience might be enhanced in social work contexts. A long-standing programme of research conducted by the authors has identified some of the competencies that underpin resilience and the methods by which it might be increased. This presentation draws on two studies that evaluated interventions that aimed to build resilience and associated competencies in student and early-career social workers. The first study used a mixed-methods approach to explore the impact of an intervention designed to enhance inter-personal and intra-personal emotional competencies (i.e. emotional intelligence, reflective ability and empathy) in student social workers. Levels of reflective ability and empathy increased significantly following the intervention and psychological distress decreased. Content analysis of reflective logs also found evidence for enhanced emotion management skills in some students. The second study utilised a wait-list controlled design to evaluate a multi-modal intervention for newly-qualified social workers employed in children’s services. Benefits were found for key competencies, such as emotional self efficacy, self compassion and psychological flexibility, as well as resilience and psychological wellbeing. The findings of these studies indicate that carefully targeted interventions have strong potential to foster emotional resilience and wellbeing in social workers that are generally maintained over time. The implications of the findings for supporting the wellbeing of student and early career social workers are considered.