What is burnout in social care ?
Burnout in general can be defined as a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged and excessive stress often relating to work and its demanding pressures.
Adult social care can be rewarding and inspiring but equally exhausting, demanding, and emotionally draining at times. Unfortunately, burnout is becoming more common in social care. Typically, it is characterised by feelings of overwhelming fatigue, reduced motivation, and a sense of being overwhelmed with work or life in general.
Burnout in social care is recognised as a condition experienced by adult social care workers and professionals who develop depression-like symptoms as a result of the pressures within their job.
In 2019 alone the World Health Organisation recognised burnout as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ where common signs tend to include: feeling overwhelmed, mental or emotional exhaustion, feeling tired and drained, feeling helpless and deflated, having a negative view of life, and having a lot of self-doubts.
A report published by Community Care found that 73% of their respondents scored highest in the category of emotional exhaustion. It is important to note that burnout in social care can start off very subtly and it can be hard to notice signs and symptoms at first. Failure to notice these signs in the long run can be very detrimental.
What causes burnout in social care?
Care worker stress can be caused by a variety of different things. Undoubtedly the events of the past few years, like most sectors, have faced many challenges. Now with the cost-of-living crisis, strikes in the NHS, and high staff turnover in care, it is becoming more and more difficult to manage workloads in health and social care.
Many care workers are left overworked with their work-life balance slowly diminishing. This in turn can make it harder for care workers to relax and as the pressure builds so does the stress, anxiety, and mental exhaustion. When this goes on for too long many health and social care professionals result in having prolonged periods of time off to recover and then return, and some don’t return at all.
Unfortunately, this then leaves more workloads being put on the remaining adult social care workers to cover and do overtime to try and help reach demand. This arguably then makes the vicious cycle worse until they experience burnout themselves.
Without having strategies in place, it will be virtually impossible to overcome the challenges facing the adult social care market, and instead the market could see turnover rates continuing to rise and more individuals leaving the profession due to burnout.
Staff shortages as a whole can also be another reason for staff burnout as it leaves many care workers having increased workloads and consistently doing overtime. Funding pressures make it harder for local authorities to employ the staff needed to reach demand.
These limiting budgets make it harder to make long-term plans for staffing, as without long-term funding councils cannot confidently make plans for the future, leaving many unhappy and overworked care workers leaving the profession or suffering significant mental health and physical health problems.
To find ways and strategies to prevent this, local authorities, care providers, care workers and care agencies should understand what causes burnout in social care as it is gradual. The list below shows some of the main causes of burnout in social care:
- High workloads
- Lack of resources and limiting budgets
- Emotional stress and exhaustion
- Unclear job expectations
- Personal factors
- Compassion fatigue
- Stigma around mental health and burnout
- Poor management
As discussed, burnout does not happen overnight, and often it is a combination of factors that result in burnout that develop and build pressure over time.
What are the signs and symptoms of care worker stress?
Like stress and burnout in general it can affect individuals differently. Due to stigmas around mental health and burnout some health and social care professionals may also be very good at hiding their struggles because of fears of looking like a failure.
It is important therefore that every individual involved in social care from arranging and commissioning to delivering the support are aware of the signs to look out for to help prevent individuals becoming burnt out, being signed off sick with stress, or worse leaving the profession altogether.
As burnout in social care can be mental, physical and emotional, there are several different signs to look out for.
Physical Signs:
- Feeling tired and exhausted all the time
- Having low immunity and feeling ill a lot of the time
- Loss of appetite
- Sleep deprivation
Emotional Signs:
- Self-doubt
- Feeling helpless
- Lack of motivation
- Low mood and lack of enthusiasm
Behavioural Signs:
- Isolation from others
- Procrastinating
- Excessive consumption of food and alcohol
Care Worker Stress – What are the impacts?
As discussed above, stress in adult social care workers can impact people differently. However, it’s not just the care workers themselves that are impacted by burnout in social care, both care agencies and care providers experience difficulties as well as the individuals receiving the care themselves.
The table below demonstrates the different impacts of burnout in social care and how they impact care workers, care providers and individuals and their families differently.
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End-users and their families |
Care Providers, Care Agencies, and Local Authorities |
Care Workers |
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Impacts of burnout in social care |
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The table above clearly shows that there are a variety of impacts burnout in social care can have on everyone involved. Care workers, care agencies, and care providers can also experience similar impacts such as decreased job satisfaction and both physical and emotional distress. Local authorities, care agencies, care providers, and care workers can all equally experience increased pressure to adjust rotas and schedules as well as ensure all legal and compliance regulations are followed so no individual is put at risk.
Like mentioned above it can be very easy therefore for a local authority to get stuck in a cycle where when staff start having time off or leaving the profession due to burnout, more then follow due to having to pick up the remaining workload with less resources and care workers at hand to deliver the care needed.
This puts the quality of care delivered at risk leading to a decrease in job performance and attentiveness and also increases the likelihood of mistakes due to fatigue and being emotionally drained. This in turn can put the safety of end-users at risk and could potentially lead to an increase in medication errors including missed medications, treatment errors, and errors in assessment. For some, missed medications could lead to rushed and avoidable hospital admissions.
With many adult social care workers leaving the profession due to burnout, many individuals will have to experience delayed access to services. This can include long waiting times to receive a bed in the hospital, discharge delays, as well as delays in accessing homecare or additional services to accommodate their needs. In fact, the LGA’s 2002 Public Health Annual Report states that more than half of local authorities say their public health services are being disrupted due to staff shortages.
Burnout in social care can impact many groups and individuals in very different ways. To prevent it, it is vital to make sure adult social care workers have a better work-life balance so that everyone involved in the social care market can work together to co-produce care plans that accommodate every need without going overbudget, improve outcomes, and most importantly without leaving carers overworked and burnout.
How to prevent care worker stress?
It can be quite easy for people to say that in order to prevent care worker stress and reduce workloads you should employ more staff. However, as we have discussed above, limits in budgets make this difficult, leaving many local authorities not able to make long-term plans, so instead carers are employed on yearly contracts.
Even though it is difficult to prevent care worker stress due to factors that are out of local authorities’ control, once strategies are in place more benefits do follow. It is crucial therefore time is spent deciding on what strategies to use to help prevent care worker stress.
When done correctly, by preventing care worker stress you can reduce staff burnout. Through preventing staff burnout your local authority can improve its retention and through improving staff retention a better working environment can be created to help improve outcomes and quality of life.
But just how can your local authority do this?
To reduce stress, anxiety, and burnout in social care it is fundamental that a collaborative approach is used with local authorities and care providers working together to mitigate the impacts of burnout. Below is a list of the number of different ways and strategies to help prevent care worker stress and burnout.
1. Reducing the stigma on mental health
One of the most important things both care providers and local authorities can do is educate workforces on the importance of looking after your own mental health and wellbeing.
Through educating all care workers, agencies, providers, and homes, managing and looking after your own wellbeing as well as the end-users being cared for can be prioritised. Care workers can learn the importance of self-care and taking regular breaks as well as eating well, exercising, and sleeping well.
Through educating and openly talking about the importance of looking after your own physical and mental health the stigma around it can be reduced, to encourage people to talk and get support when needed and not be ashamed about it.
This stigma can also be reduced by offering regular support sessions where challenges can be discussed, emotional support can be given, and individuals can seek guidance.
Another way this can also be done is through establishing peer support networks. This can therefore help reduce colleagues feeling isolated and feeling like a failure if they are struggling with the pressures of adult social care.
2. Training and Skill Development
Another way burnout can be avoided is through providing ongoing training and personal development to help care providers build their skills and confidence and reduce stress related to job performance.
Teaching about the importance of having effective time management is also crucial to help care providers prioritise tasks and reduce the feelings of being overwhelmed.
3. Offer flexible working arrangements
Another way care worker stress can be avoided is being flexible with working arrangements and scheduling.
Sometimes people can cope with pressures at work when their home life balances it out or vice versa. However, when both are intense it can be harder to cope. Having more flexible work arrangements allows individuals to maintain a better work-life balance and cope with the pressures of work and home life better.
4. Offer stress and wellbeing assessments
Both stress and wellbeing assessments can be another way to help prevent care worker stress. Here care workers can fill out surveys about how they are feeling things at work are going and be able to share concerns or challenges they are experiencing.
This is a great preventative measure where local authorities and care providers can work together to ensure the right support is in place to avoid care worker stress.
Some workplaces are now embedding social prescribing within their strategies to ensure that if a care worker scores anything low they can have the opportunity to be referred to a social prescribing link worker to help them manage their health and wellbeing better and avoid more carers leaving the profession due to burnout.
5. Policies and procedures
One of the final ways to help prevent burnout in social care is through establishing clear policies and procedures to address burnout and offer steps for seeking support.
To make sure these procedures are followed it is essential that all care providers are aware of the policies in place, so everyone’s mental health and wellbeing are looked after properly, not just the end-users and their families.
By proactively addressing and identifying signs of burnout in social care, care providers and local authorities can create a supportive environment that promotes wellbeing of the end-users and workforces alike, this, in the long term, can continuously improve the quality of care provided.
How can technology help prevent burnout in social care?
Like lots of sectors, many organisations including the social care sector are digitally transforming the way they commission, run, track, and support the services they deliver.
Digitally transforming processes and investing in technological solutions can play a significant role in helping prevent burnout in social care by enhancing efficiency, improving communication, providing support, and improving the quality of care delivered.
Through investing in technology both care providers and local authorities can experience many benefits including:
- Promoting a better work-life balance
- Make workloads more manageable
- Ensure safety
- Improve care planning
- Help future planning
- Offer on-demand and EarlyPay
1. Promoting a better work-life balance
Technology can help promote a better work-life balance by providing tools and solutions to streamline processes and administrative tasks to help save time on admin and allow more time to deliver the care needed.
Investing in technology, therefore, provides the opportunity to make scheduling and rotas easier by platforms updating them for you in real-time so carers are aware of any last-minute changes whenever and wherever they are.
This helps to store all key information in one centralised place to help carers save time on looking for the information they need when their time is already so stretched. Here stress can be reduced as they do not have to worry about being late to the next visit due to spending so much time looking for the information they need. The digital documentation makes managing caseloads even simpler.
East Sussex Rehabilitation Centre, found through using our Access CM solution, scheduling visits could not be any easier. It has given support workers the opportunity to have case notes available whenever and wherever they were due to using our Access CM mobile app.
Here all support workers could be updated in real-time of any changes to schedules as well as being able to notify others if they are running late to a visit due to an emergency or traffic.
Previously support workers had to call on-call at the same time every day to find out their schedule for the next day even if they were off sick or on annual leave. This led to many leaving as they wanted a better work-life balance. Since using Access CM calls from support workers to the on-call team reduced by 80%. This meant that the on-call team had more time to respond to emergencies and make sure end-users were always the top priority.
2. Make workloads more manageable
Staff shortages, staff recruitment, and retention are some of the main reasons access to social care gets delayed.
To make individuals be able to access social care quicker and allow carers not to be overworked it is crucial that workloads are made more manageable, which is where technology can help in several ways.
The introduction of telehealth, electronic call monitoring services, and virtual wards has helped local authorities massively to manage the demand for social care. Not only can individuals receive virtual care, but they can also manage symptoms more effectively in their own homes.
At Access Technology Enabled Care both our Access Assure and Oysta solutions aim to help enhance people’s lives to offer more freedom and increase independence as well as security and confidence support will be there when needed.
Our user-friendly devices help to respond to both immediate and long term needs by incorporating both reactive alarm functionality and digital insights to help individuals live safer and more independent lives, as well as help reduce the workloads of care workers.
Investing in technology enabled care allows changes in a person’s wellbeing to be identified through digital insights, which in turn allows dynamic care planning, and rostering to put carers in the places they are needed most. Smart alerts can be set up so support workers can offer support before something more critical takes place. This helps to prioritise care and alter care plans when needed to deliver better proactive care.
One of our Assure customers, The Government of Jersey, found that through investing in digital telecare they were able to transform their care model for the better. The transition to the new digital service has been warmly welcomed by users with over 95% choosing to switch to the new service.
Average installation time took as little as 25 minutes and care workers could be there in real-time when support is needed to provide better and more joined-up sustainable care, reduce workloads, and allow individuals the freedom to do more.
3. Ensure safety
Another challenge when preventing care worker stress is to ensure all legal and compliance regulations are followed to ensure safety.
Through investing in technology your local authority can ensure they only work with fully compliant care providers.
At Access Adam Care Commissioning we know how time is limited to onboard the providers and support workers you need to cater to every need.
Our Commissiong Platform enables your local authority to manage your workflow in one single system to improve the efficiency and accuracy of provider placement while maintaining full visibility of the marketplace.
The West Yorkshire integrated Care Board found through using Access Adam they were able to help support NHS All Age Continuing Care to streamline the entire continuing healthcare process where referrals, case management, brokerage and procurement for the ICB could be managed into a single system. Here no carer would be left overworked and the risk of the quality of care declining would be reduced.
4. Improve care planning
Using digital solutions to improve care planning can be one of the best ways to help reduce care worker stress by reducing time pressures and giving them all the information, they need in one place.
Not only does it make it easier to look at rotas but it also makes it easier to receive real-time notifications when care packages, plans, and rotas change to have the most up-to-date information consistently. It also makes it easier to flag concerns so timely support can be given when needed.
Our latest integration with our Care Planning software and our Access Assure Home Hub makes smart alerts and alarms from our Access Assure Home Hub visible to care workers in the mobile care planning app. These immediate efficiencies enhance activity information between visits to give care workers the flexibility to make better data-driven decisions regarding care to improve their care planning and prioritise their resources.
Our Access Workspace for Care offers a variety of modules to make it easier for care workers to go about their day-to-day tasks without any time pressures or stresses. Our Access Care Planning makes the digitisation of schedules and rotas easier so you can stay away from paper processes and spreadsheets, instead you can have one system. For both homecare managers and care workers admin time can also be reduced so more time can be spent on critical tasks.
Premier Community has found through using a variety of modules in our Access Workspace for Care they have been able to overcome growth barriers and consistently see an improvement in their efficiencies and processes to deliver better quality care, make workloads more manageable, and help reduce discharge delays through allowing multiple care packages to be developed a day.
5. Help with future planning
One of the last ways technology can help prevent burnout in social care is through investing in future planning.
Investing in predictive technology helps local authorities and care providers ensure they have the right number of resources to reach demand, whilst keeping track of the provider market to ensure all care delivered is quality assured and meets both the standards set by the CQC and the individual.
Investing in our Access PAMMs technology can help your local authority ensure it has the data analytics needed to both prepare for now and in the future.
Middlesbrough Council, for example, found through investing in our Access PAMMS Demand Model, that they had a comprehensive overview of their local care market and had over 99% accuracy in future predictions of upcoming care demand.
This meant Middlesbrough could plan and commission resources that were needed and prevented carers being left with unsustainable workloads to help improve care outcomes and minimise stress levels in adult social care workers.
6. Offer on-demand and EarlyPay
As well as helping support day-to-day tasks for care workers, investing in technology can also help care workers reduce stress by helping them receive pay on demand.
This can help reduce care worker stress as they can access their pay whenever they need it such as when emergencies arise, to avoid large credit card bills, and prevent overdraft fines. According to Payments UK, the on-demand payment market in the UK could be worth £3.4 billion by 2025.
Access EarlyPay has been hugely beneficial for all care employees during the cost-of-living crisis to eliminate any financial stresses or worries of prices rising and to prevent both fuel and food poverty to maintain the good physical and mental wellbeing of your care workers. 93% of our customers have said that on-demand pay has helped them through the cost-of-living crisis.
The best ways to prevent staff burnout in social care
In this article I have reviewed what burnout is in general and how it works in social care by reviewing what causes it and what the impacts of care worker stress is for end-users and their families, care agencies, providers and local authorities, as well as care workers themselves.
With the pressures and challenges the social care market is currently facing it is making it increasingly difficult to both recruit and retain care workers, which in turn makes the current challenges worse.
Burnout in social care does not happen overnight so it is vital that strategies are in place to help notice it as well as prevent it so the best support can be given to care providers, local authorities and care workers themselves. Here they can all work together to achieve the best outcomes and deliver the best person-centred care possible.
This article has reviewed the different methods that can be used including reducing the stigma around mental health, making workloads more manageable, as well as ensuring safety. I have also addressed the impact of digitally transforming processes and investing in digital solutions to help prevent care worker stress.
What is important to note is through investing in technology enabled care you are not only preventing burnout in social care, you are also helping reduce the dependency on both health and social care by increasing independence in individuals. Technology enabled care also provides reassurance that they are safe and doing well by notifying them when activity changes before something more critical takes place.
For more information on our Access technology-enabled care discover our digital telecare today.
Contact us to see first-hand what our technology-enabled care offering can provide your local authority today to reduce care worker stress and deliver the best continuity of care.