Stuck in a job rut – not sure how to get out.

[NightOwlGirl]

I’m in my 40’s, married with a 5-year-old. I have been working in children’s social care in a variety of roles for over 20 years. The majority of this time, over 10 years, has been in one team within one local authority. For the past few years, I have been increasingly unhappy and losing the motivation to do my job. Every month seems to bring more administrative tasks on top of the requirement to complete statutory visits etc…. An increasing number of clients are now outside the local authority, which means lengthy journeys to visit them. In a busy week I can easily clock up 400+ miles.

Although we are a large team (the largest we have ever been) the majority of my colleagues have only been with us less than 2 years. We seem to have lots of people join us, gain a bit of experience, and move on again just as quickly. I feel that I am stuck in a vicious circle. Many of my clients display very challenging difficult behaviour, and simply I can no longer be bothered to deal with them, so I end up focusing my attention on those ‘nice’ clients who do appreciate my support and are pleasant to deal with. I know this is wrong, but I just can’t help it.

I have plenty of qualifications, so that is not the problem, what I lack is the breadth of experience and the longer I stay in my role the worse this gets. The biggest ‘sticking factors’ that are keeping me in my job are salary, a permanent contract, and commuting distance to my office. From time to time, I do check job adverts, but I just end up getting more depressed -the only jobs I see are too similar to what I’m doing now, or too far away. Relocation is not an option at present due to other family commitments. I am willing to consider a small salary drop to get out, but it can only be small due to our outgoings.

My last performance review indicated that I was working just above the absolute minimum level to avoid more formal action, and it was made clear that I must improve over the next 6 months. Has anyone else in similar circumstances made a midlife career change? how did you do it?

I don’t work in a similar field so I don’t think a direct comparison would help. But want to ask, what has happened to the careers of the people who have left after a few years… where are they now? Stalk some of them on LinkedIn and see if you like some of their destination jobs, it might give you ideas.

The job sounds incredibly arduous. Is money a big factor? Would you rather work in, say, a school maybe as a senco or a TA?

I am a social worker and can understand completely how you feel. I’m guessing from the fact you say so many service users are challenging and difficult that you work in children in families or similar? I do, so I understand how incredibly hard it is when clients are like this. Sometimes they are aggressive and threatening and it’s extremely hard to have to keep going back to face these people.
I know you say you’ve had a variety of roles. Have you tried adult care, like older people or people with disabilities? I have no experience in adult care but hear in general clients are a bit more welcoming and receptive to support? Obviously that won’t be the case for everyone.
It doesn’t help you’ve had a not very nice performance review. I wonder how they even measure that? We have supervision but performance isn’t measured in that quantitative way. I bet it’s to do with meeting deadlines and all those ‘measurable’ outcomes when actually social care is (or should be) so much more about the intangible. I hear your frustration there.
I would say maybe a lateral transfer to another department or perhaps a smaller voluntary service or another local authority?

TAs are paid quite a bit less than Social Workers. And a SENCO must be a qualified teacher

What about LADO? I’ve been in your position and last year took the jump to apply for a LADO role. Some authorities allow you to do this completely remote. It’s the best move I made. I’m no longer bogged down with the drama of front line social work, the pay is good, I’m not fire fighting and I finally have the work life balance I’ve been looking for for 15 years. My only regret is that I didn’t do it when my son was little (although wouldn’t have had enough experience at that point).

I have a friend who is a children's social worker. She made the move from working in a a local authority to working in a children's hospice, and says she wishes she'd done it sooner. There is a team of social workers there, this could be worth considering. Or possibly going to work for the police in their MASH, going to the strat meetings and safeguarding children from the other side.
Good luck whatever you decide.

A social worker friend moved from children and families to older adults social work and finds it so much better.

Sounds like you need to explore other options - for your sake and the sake of the children on your caseload - particularly if you’re avoiding working with some families. Most local authorities offer coaching for employees, might be worth exploring that to consider next steps.

Are you a social worker? There are so many different areas to work in and with so much experience you will get snapped up. Supervising Social Worker ( working with Foster carers) Adoption and different areas in Adult's Social Care.
Sounds like you're in Children Looked After Team with the travel. Children Looked After and Child Protection are the most challenging roles, it will be so much easier and probably more rewarding in other teams and most LA's pay the same salary regardless of the team.

What about applying for CAFCASS?

Get that resume dusted off!
apply for jobs you want. For salaries you want.

ask for specific areas of improvement from your work. And when they stay something speak up - ok you want me to do X… I already 400 miles and this. Or where do I prioritize X with other tasks D U T and Q?
what should no longer be on my plate.

you have way more experience than your colleagues, so what are they doing different??? Is this just a way work is trying to get rid of you and your probably higher salary? Make sure to look at that, and get evidence to protect yourself.

or are you actually sucking? Are you that deep in a rut you feel it? Talk to pannel/boss (I’d suggest multiple people at once) regarding what’s up. What are they going to do ? Fire you…? That’s coming anyway.

and if you’re lacking in breadth of skills bring that up as a cross training opportunity, or company paid training. That can help, and reignite an interest.

and change something at home too. The discontentment can bleed over. So marriage ok? Can you start a new hobby together?

but yeah. Get that resume up to date. See where other people are leaving to. See what the jobs you want require and see if you can get current employer to give you any of it.

Get your CV updated, get on LinkedIn and Undeed and start applying for roles. Having been job hunting myself recently there are literally hundreds of SW roles available so the world is your oyster. But it does sound like you need to get your mojo back.
Maybe it's time to step away from your LA or maybe LAs completely.
I work for a children's residential care provider and we have SWs in our teams, alternatively we have a fostering arm which also has SWs.
A couple of friends of mine went down the agency route as the money was so good though both came back to the LA, is this a possibility just to change your scenery as it were.

Just doing the bare minimum is no good for you, your career or the vulnerable people you're supporting.

I am also a social worker. Have you considered moving into a third sector role? It will likely mean a pay drop but would allow you to still use your skills without the same level of statutory responsibility.
I am in Scotland and work in criminal justice social work , the equivalent in England i believe is the probation service. I love my job. Highly recommend that area of work.

I worked in children in care as a social worker in the LA for years and just couldn’t do it by the end, the constant feeding of data into the system whilst trying to juggle an increasingly complex caseload as I gained more experience was making me so stressed. I tried referral and assessment instead on agency for a bit after I finished in children in care and there were pros and cons to that (nice to have short term pieces of work but if you got a bad duty day you were out of whack for weeks because of it), but ultimately what it all boiled down to was not having the headspace to deal with the children and families and their behaviour and emotions, whilst the constant nagging pressure was ever present in the background over the kpis and paperwork stuff that mounted up day by day, I just couldn’t juggle the two any longer. For me it was one or the other but not both. The only way to keep on top of it is to work way beyond your contracted hours and it’s just thankless after a while and got me down. I ended applying to the NHS and do inpatient forensic mental health social work now, and while I sometimes feel a bit deskilled because it’s so straightforward and the remit of the role is quite narrow, it’s just a dream to have a set and reasonable caseload (the ward only takes so many patients) and to do my job in my working hours and come home and chill. I don’t have to travel miles every day visiting people out of area etc, and my service users are all in hospital so I don’t need to worry about them being safe when I go home. I initially missed wfh but don’t mind now I’m used to going in every day. It’s been the best move I ever made and I don’t regret it one bit. I get to spend a lot of time with the service users as well which is lovely, and all I ever wanted from a social work job to be honest because I truly believe time and holding space for people is the one thing budgets can’t buy, and it’s what really helps make a difference. Don’t think just because you’ve done one social work (I assume from what you say) job for a long time that you need to stay in that area of practice - I was very honest at my interview for this about where there were gaps in my experience and just emphasised my transferable skills and reiterated that I was keen to learn and it got me the job! I took a 16k pay cut to come to this permanent job from agency work and it’s been worth losing every penny, honestly. I was lucky they negotiated the salary for me though at the NHS and put me on top increment of my band so I get paid similar to what I’d be on in the LA at the top of my grade as a senior social worker. Sending you a big hug and hope everything works out for you whatever you decide to do, you’re doing a hard job in incredibly difficult circumstances and no doubt under appreciated for it.

I work for social care but thankfully adults OT. I can see why you’d want to get out I can’t lie.m and OT is defo leas challenging than SW although I think SS is just awful. I moved form the NHS and years in I wish I hadn’t but proving difficult to move back to NHS to NhS.

A couple of social worker friends have moved to fostering in private agencies, or within the LA and to court advocacy work. Fostering sounds so much better.

Thank you all. I don't mind staying with my current LA, if I can move to a different role that involves less traveling. The biggest sticking factor is salary. I've seen a few jobs I would be keen on, but all of them would mean a substantial drop in salary . We could afford a drop of maybe £1000-£2000 a year but any more and we would risk putting ourselves in real difficulties. I think I really just need some help matching my skills what recruiters are looking for.

My husband was in the same position as you OP. He worked in a children in care team and was working 12 hours a day, plus weekends to catch up on admin. He was travelling Country wide to complete stat visits, sometimes driving on 6/7 hour return journeys for ONE client alone. He ended up going on long term sick because he had a mental health breakdown. He then moved to a more local team (same area of practice) and lasted only a few weeks as the workload was no different. He ended up going off sick again and was ready to leave social work completely. Fortunately I managed to persuade him not to give up on the career he had studied so hard for. He applied to move into a children's duty team- which he is really enjoying. All of the visits are local, the pieces of work are more short term and so much more manageable. He really likes his new team and feels much more supported. He has recently been promoted to an advanced social worker. My suggestion would be to look at alternative teams as it's just not sustainable having to travel such long distances when you have such large caseloads. Especially as you've got a young child as well. Hope this helps... but you are definitely not alone.

ofsted?

The thing we should all be getting upset over is that the care market is such that these poor children are being placed hundreds of miles from home. Their social worker might be the only person that is familiar to them and they need people to travel to see them.

We probably are getting upset over this! Though the social worker is now rarely a known figure to the YP as there is such a huge turnover in many areas!

The region where I work, in residential care, is looking at opening an assessment unit where we could potentially take children from our LA and then place them locally in the home best suited to them. This was only discussed last week but it as exciting proposal.