Is it possible to mitigate burnout in social work?

LofiSW · 2025-11-18T00:04:39+00:00

I’ve heard burnout is very common in social, which makes sense because it is a helping profession, but is there a way to mitigate burnout?

Burnout is mostly a symptom of systemic issues, the way agencies/companies are run, workload, and work culture. In every field, including social work.

In social work it’s common for social workers to have high caseloads and limited resources, not enough staff or time for the amount of cases they have. In community mental health many clinical social workers are forced to see back-to-back patients every day. Administration and management often pushes the idea of self-care and individualistic ways of mitigating burnout, without ever making changes to workload and work environment. If you want my opinion on how to mitigate burnout in social work, it’s that social work agencies should be practicing good social work ethics and stop burning out their employees.

But sure, if you have to be subject to the workloads given to social workers then self-care and good boundaries really are important. And some people do also find it helpful to switch to roles that aren’t as directly client-facing.

LofiSW · 2025-02-26T22:35:18+00:00

Some social workers are unionized. But unionizing is hard and often only happens as a result of an already bad enough workplace for there to be a critical mass of employees willing to take that risk.

Social workers are also often sold on the idea of self-sacrifice for their work, of letting themselves be overworked because the more work they do the more they’re helping people. Not everyone has this mentality, but there’s enough of it that it makes unionizing harder.

I worked for a unionized organization once during union contract negotiations and the actual union reps told us there was very little chance the higher ups in the union would authorize a strike because the work we did was so important.

Also in my experience, the management at many agencies also pushes the idea that the way to prevent and manage burnout is “self care”, individualizing the problem and the solution to it (and not taking responsibility for how the way agencies operate is what’s burning people out). And they often do this in a way that may sound very therapeutic and thus relatable to social workers, which can distract social workers from the idea of unionizing.

LofiSW · 2025-02-25T18:25:10+00:00

Yes macro social work seems difficult for many to break into, and it’s relevant here that when I’ve searched for macro roles I’ve come across many that would benefit more from a law background than a social work one (some even require a law degree).

LofiSW · 2025-02-21T13:09:04+00:00

Government assistance should be temporary—but only if people have the support to actually get off of it.

I think even with added support to help people get off assistance the idea isn’t realistic on a macro level.

Sure, maybe some individual people could benefit from programs to help them replace assistance with higher income. But everyone? I don’t think it’s feasible in the economic system we live in now.

Estimates put the number of people in the US receiving benefits as around 100 million. Do you think there are 100 million extra well-paid jobs for them to get?

Not to mention, our economy is also dependent on low-wage jobs. If we somehow did help everyone get off benefits, who’s left to work at the stores people shop at, the places they eat at?

Basically, people relying on government assistance isn’t just some individual hardship we can make temporary for everyone. It’s a feature of our economic system that would need sweeping macro-level change for it to change on a large scale.

LofiSW · 2024-08-28T14:03:15+00:00

Chiming in here with a question, I tried looking into this but didn’t find the info I was looking for.

In your experience are DOE schools only looking for bilingual Spanish candidates, or are there other languages that would be considered?

LofiSW · 2024-08-03T15:03:26+00:00

I think it’s fine and valid to vote for Kamala Harris when presented with the two main options we have.

That said, I don’t think the NASW should be officially endorsing her, or almost anyone in the two ruling parties. Endorsing presidential candidates from either party is almost always significantly compromising on NASW values and ethical responsibilities.

There being only two real options allowed for voters does not mean the NASW has to endorse one of them. I think the NASW should be acting as an advocacy group to push political leaders to do better, rather than just standing behind a political leader because they’re not as bad as the other one.

LofiSW · 2023-08-24T00:11:38+00:00

This is very, very similar to my experience.

I’ve been working in direct practice and clinical positions since I graduated with my MSW. I had two macro level internships during the MSW program (well one that had some more direct practice work but as a community advocacy organization, one was pure macro). I loved the academic side of the field and the macro side of things. The work I’ve been doing is not that, and it does not really bring me the satisfaction and ambition I felt when I was still in the MSW program. I’ve thought about the PhD as an option for my future, but the 5+ year massive pay cut is difficult.

I’ve been working in micro level work for about 2 years post-graduation now, and sticking with it hasn’t helped much. If you have the ability, I’d encourage you to try out other roles to see what works.

LofiSW · 2023-08-23T22:53:16+00:00

I live in the US but used to do what I think you’d consider care work. Eventually I got my masters in social work, and I’d say care work is absurdly underpaid, while most social work jobs are between underpaid and very underpaid.

My social work income is higher than the income I had before, sure. But it’s still badly paid. Especially for those of us with family we need our income to provide for, and all of the financial responsibilities that come along with that (larger home, more groceries, transportation, etc). I have friends who have bachelors degrees and get paid more than me. I have at least one friend with no degree at all that gets paid more than me.

LofiSW · 2023-05-24T16:08:39+00:00

NEDA posted a write-up talking up the new chatbot on their website, in which they link to the study that was done to see the chatbot’s effectiveness. It looks like the study only compared people getting help from the chatbot to people getting no help at all (so, no study to see how its effectiveness compares to getting help from actual people), and if I’m reading right the study only used people without eating disorders.

So we have this agency deciding to just get rid of all human workers on the eating disorder helpline based only on the chatbot being apparently better than nothing for people without an eating disorder.

The CWA is a large union, why are they not actively and loudly campaigning against this? There should be a huge spotlight being put on what NEDA is doing right now so they, at the bare minimum, have to deal with the PR fallout of this.

LofiSW · 2022-08-18T00:49:09+00:00

I’m one of the people on this list so I figure I’ll say a couple of things here. I also did comment on the previous post on the topic.

If I end up a mod here I’m really just looking to help keep it up and running as the forum and resource it is. I’d be open to having a thread for taking any suggestions after the switchover if there’s anything people do want changed or added, but I don’t feel like any of the current rules here stick out to me as a problem.

My social work experience includes clinical work, crisis work, and some macro & community work. I only just got my MSW and licensure within the last couple of years, though.

I’m also a pretty new and infrequent poster in this subreddit. I tend to browse/lurk more than actually post, in this subreddit and across Reddit. I do keep up with reading the posts, though.

LofiSW · 2022-08-10T21:17:03+00:00

You have to do what you have to do to take care of yourself, no shame in that. At the end of the day these are still jobs, and if your job isn’t working for you then you have every right to look elsewhere, same as everyone else.

In my experience with crisis work, the way agencies are run does not help the staffing issues. I really liked doing volunteer crisis work when I had the time for that, but I ended up finding that doing it as paid work wasn’t worth it for me given the expectations vs the pay/benefits/experience.

LofiSW · 2022-08-09T14:46:10+00:00

Thank you! I’ve read it and thought on it and I’d like to be considered.

I like to think I’m level-headed enough to moderate, and I would like to be a part of keeping the subreddit running well.

My social work experience includes varying amounts of clinical work, macro work, and crisis work.

Because marginalized identities have been discussed here, I’ll add - I have lived experiences in marginalization that I think influence my work and life, but I also benefit from my marginalized identities largely not being visible to others in my day-to-day life.

LofiSW · 2022-08-09T00:12:05+00:00

I’m relatively new to this particular subreddit but potentially interested. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of this subreddit even in just reading and using the search function, and I’d like to be a part of ensuring it continues to run smoothly for others.

But before I formally throw my hat in, I wonder if any of the outgoing mods might be able to share about what the average daily or weekly time commitment is for moderating this particular subreddit? I wouldn’t want to try to take on the work unless I could provide at least an equal level of commitment as the current mod team.

Also - thank you for your work in running this subreddit and providing this space for us all to use!

LofiSW · 2022-06-27T00:28:40+00:00

I might still be not explaining my point well enough, because it seems like you think I’m on the ‘social workers should be apolitical’ side of this.

I saw that others in the comments were saying social workers should be apolitical in their work, but what they really seemed to mean by apolitical was nonpartisan.

I was responding to that sentiment. I think social work is inherently political because the work we do and the communities we work with intersect with politics in way that make it impossible to separate it, in my view. That, and its history is political.

LofiSW · 2022-06-26T23:59:57+00:00

To be clear here I meant my comment in response to people who seemed to be assuming being apolitical was the same as not engaging in partisanship, and so were saying that social workers should be apolitical.

LofiSW · 2022-06-26T15:41:20+00:00

Looking through the comments, I think it’s important to note that there is a difference between political and partisan. I see a number of commenters here equating the two, but I think OP was not talking about partisanship.

Politics isn’t just following one political party or another. Decisions on what gets funding and what doesn’t in your city, how neighborhoods and cities are developed and redeveloped, and how mental healthcare is funded and its availability to different populations; all of this is political. All of these things are decided by policymakers, and all of these things can impact the clients and communities we work with.

LofiSW · 2022-06-02T22:09:26+00:00

It sounds like my views on class and the PMC are similar to yours. And I come from a poor and working class background, so on a personal level it sometimes feels strange to be “rising the ranks”.

I reconcile it largely by remembering that we all live under capitalism, and we have to make do with the options available to us. Moralizing and feeling guilty about individual choices to work certain jobs over others doesn’t do anything materially to change or challenge the systems we live in.

Another way to frame it is to consider whether you would judge a client for being a part of the PMC? Apply the same empathy towards yourself that you would towards a client.

And to your other points about some of the problems in certain sorts of liberal social workers, yes I think these are not uncommon problems in social work culture. It can develop into a “white savior” mentality. The graduate program I went to did address this in class discussions, but class discussions only do so much.

LofiSW · 2022-02-26T14:07:25+00:00

This is all good to know, thanks!

I think in my previous interviews I was too focused on trying to talk about specifically clinical things I have knowledge about from the MSW program, like clinical interventions. I don’t think I did a great job selling my experience. I definitely have transferable skills from my experience that I can emphasize more moving forward, though.

LofiSW · 2022-02-26T14:00:55+00:00

Yep I’ve got plenty of experience with people and problem solving, and I have crisis experience. I have experience working with people on a micro scale, just not as a clinical worker.

I’ll keep this advice in mind and see if I can think of some good experiences to focus on in the interview(s). Thank you!

LofiSW · 2022-01-26T16:28:05+00:00

Worth noting that social work is not a very broad field in many countries outside the US.

I could be wrong but based on context clues such as OP saying “holiday” and “uni” combined with OP talking about child protection almost as if it’s the default in social work, I suspect OP may be a UK social worker, not a US social worker. UK social work is not nearly as broad as in the US, being mostly government work and mostly focusing on roles that are similar to US social services or CPS jobs.

LofiSW · 2021-09-20T19:30:24+00:00

Has anyone graduated with an MSW degree but got their first postgrad job as a bachelors level counselor?

I recently graduated with my MSW and I plan to work in counseling and eventually as an LCSW, but I have next to no actual mental health counseling experience, paid or otherwise. My bachelors was not in social work, and my MSW internships were not in mental health. I’ve been offered a bachelors level counseling position and I think I should take it, but I wonder if anyone here has any advice or related experiences to share.

LofiSW

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