How three social workers established boundaries to protect their wellbeing at work

From the Front Line invites social workers to share their experiences on various topics and running issues within the sector to help others in their professional journey. To express an interest, email us at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

The workplace culture within social work is nothing short of intense.

Long hours, complex cases, stress that seeps into personal life, scarce resources and seemingly endless paperwork drive many social workers to burnout.

In a 2024 poll of 716 Social Workers Union (SWU) members, just over half (52.7%) of respondents reported that their mental health had deteriorated recently due to work, while a further 9.6% said it had “collapsed”. Key pressures mentioned included caseloads, administrative demands, completing work to tight timescales and staffing shortages.

In such a high-pressure environment, maintaining professional boundaries can feel almost impossible. Yet it can be what makes or breaks a social worker's career.

For the latest installment of From the Front Line, Community Care spoke to three social workers about the circumstances that led them to set boundaries at work, the challenges they faced in doing so and the vital importance of supportive management.

Daniel Wilding, adult community team, qualified in 2016

About three years ago, my life revolved entirely around work.

I would be working in recovery and rehabilitation during the week and then do night shifts during weekends in a psychiatric liaison service. I was constantly in a pattern of having to reset my sleep pattern. As a result, my sleep hygiene was all over the place.

Part of it was due to me working through bankruptcy and an individual voluntary arrangement, but I’m also ambitious and I wanted to do more because I’ve always had a passion for mental health social work.

I realised I needed to address this imbalance when my wellbeing started deteriorating. My energy levels were extremely low, and I had lost a significant amount of weight. Colleagues started to notice there was a negative change in how I was physically presenting at work.

I reduced the time I was working in the psychiatric liaison service and began, gradually, to prioritise more rest, good nutrition and even how much water I was drinking in a day. Then I consciously tried to strike a balance between work and other areas of life.

Dealing with past experience of mental ill-health

In terms of work, the main boundary I set concerned the level of case complexity I was willing to take on.

At times, my past experiences of mental ill-health resurfaced when I worked with people who were facing similar challenges. To protect both myself and the adults I was supporting, I worked with my team manager to maintain clear professional boundaries. Sometimes that meant I needed to stop working on the case.

My manager also offered the opportunity for counselling. I had a conversation with a speciality doctor through our employee assistance programme, and that led to me deciding to self-refer for counselling.

This helped me process some things from my personal life and maintain those personal and professional boundaries.

‘Boundary setting at work is an evolving process’

Today, I’m much clearer about what my boundaries are.

Setting boundaries is a constant, evolving process as we navigate our work with employers, the people we support and our lives outside of work. I would advise seeking support from peers, supervision, your team manager or any employee wellbeing services available.

I still go through phases of picking up a bit of overtime, mainly because of systemic pressures on the team.

But overall, I’m far firmer about setting boundaries. When 5pm, the laptop is shut down, the phone is switched off, and I do something that nourishes my own wellbeing.

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Jen Paddock, adult social work lead, qualified in 2002

In 2014, I became quite mentally unwell and left social work for four months.

My husband had had an unexpected subarachnoid brain haemorrhage. We had two young children, work was intense and I didn't have good managerial support. I felt like I had a lot on my shoulders and just fell apart.

It took me getting to rock bottom and leaving my job completely to think: “If I do go back to it, I have to have a completely different mindset and some clear boundaries in place."

Anxiety over work-related conflict

A supervisor of mine had once said something that has stayed with me: “When you go into work, imagine that you're putting on an imaginary suit of armour.”

For me, one thing that would stress me out, and that I found difficult to switch off from, was work-related conflict. If someone was angry because they weren’t getting what they wanted or because they weren’t happy with my response, I became very anxious.

So it was about having this virtual suit of armour on, so I could protect myself emotionally from what they might say.

It was about recognising that I'm there to represent the local authority, and follow a legal process and statutory guidance. That’s all I can do. I was taking on too much of people’s wants rather than their needs.

Moving on from cases

In my role now, I’m supporting my staff to put similar boundaries in place. So quite often within supervision, if I see one of the staff going round in circles, unable to move on, I encourage them to do a reflection.

We might use a reflective tool, or just have a conversation, where I might say: “What happened? Why did you feel that? Is there anything you could have done differently?. If there isn’t, then put it to bed; you’ve done everything you could do."

I also use the defensible decision support tool. When you’ve got a lot of “noise” surrounding a case - professionals’ views, the family’s views, individuals’ views – it may be helpful to compare everything against the legal framework, statutory guidance and policies.

That way, staff feel clear that they’ve done as much as they can, and they don’t take it home emotionally.

Managing professional guilt

Professional guilt when setting boundaries is only something that, 23 years in, I’ve learned to manage. It’s about recognising time and again that we can only do so much within our role. We don’t have magic wands. We can’t always fix situations.

Sometimes it’s just about being comfortable with that knowledge. You come into this job wanting to make everything better, but you learn that quite often our role isn’t to fix, it’s to empower other people to help themselves.

In adults’, there is also the danger of taking on too much. Sometimes our role is unclear to people we’re working with, and so we may be asked to do what other agencies don’t want to do. “Oh, the social worker will sort that out,” they’ll say.

With experience, you learn your role has parameters. For example, under the Care Act, we determine care and support needs, but we wouldn’t be finding someone a new house. That’s for a different agency.

The importance of leadership

Our team is known for being open and supportive, which makes staff feel safe to admit they’re struggling.

I’ve worked in teams where managers were very stressed and unavailable, and that made me feel vulnerable as a practitioner. So, strong leadership plays a big role in maintaining a healthy workplace.

I would advise colleagues to speak with their lead, if possible. If not, talk to someone else in the leadership team. Be honest about how you’re feeling.

Boundaries often tie into prioritisation. Talk it through with them, get a plan in place and try not to leave work that day without having discussed it. Otherwise, it will eat away at you.

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Andrew Gambrill, independent practice educator and trainer, qualified in 2007

Putting boundaries is a rite of passage that social workers have to go through.

I had two, maybe three, episodes where I was overworked and unable to cope. And you go through stages: you start skipping lunch, working early and leaving late, and then the overwhelm comes, and even the simplest decisions become impossible.

A problem of culture, not workplace policies

I've been fortunate to work across many local authorities. While their policies are always on point, it's the workplace culture and expectations that become the issue.

For example, when I was supporting newly qualified social workers, I would often see them get up to leave at 5.30pm and immediately look around.

That’s a real snapshot of what our culture looks like. The rhetoric is, it's okay for you to leave, but the visual tells you everybody else is still here.

Another frequent story I’d hear is they’d log on at 9am and already have two hours of work to catch up on because the others had started earlier. So they would feel like they had to start early just to keep up.

'Until we have enough funding, the problem will remain'

To me, the root of the issue is not management – because they’re also doing crazy hours – but the underfunding of social care.

Managers will say: “This is all well and good, Andrew, but here’s our waiting list, here’s our intake list. What am I going to do?" What you need is a universal pushback from everybody.

Senior managers often are not even aware of how overworked the staff are because what happens is the message gets filtered.

The team manager says to the operations manager: “It’s a bit rubbish, but we’ll manage." They don’t want to admit that the situation is terrible. Then the operations manager tells the strategic manager: “It’s okay, just a bit of a struggle."

Then the assistant director says, “It’s okay”. By the time the message gets to the director, everything looks fine.

Until the funding is correct, we’ll always have this problem. You can’t just tell service users to stop coming to you. The budget should react to the community’s needs, not the other way around.

This makes it even more important to have certain boundaries in place to maintain your wellbeing.

Four rules to avoid burnout

I think the first sign that something’s wrong is when you start neglecting lunch. Then it’s working until late, then you say: “I’ll start early to get on top of things." But really, you’re doing volunteering work.

I’ve boiled it down to four basic rules: Take your - unpaid - lunch away from the computer, finish and start on time, and never get the computer back out during the weekend or after tea. It sounds simplistic, but it’s fundamental.

Sadly, the first question when someone goes off long-term sick is always, “Is it stress?”. And usually the answer is yes. I’ve seen so many brilliant social workers break or leave altogether. It breaks my heart.

'Having a good manager is everything'

If I feel overwhelmed when managing caseloads, I take my to-do list to my manager. I break it into tasks for today, the end of the day, the end of the week and next week. That way, it clearly shows how much I have on.

Often, the manager will recognise I have too much work. Sometimes they’ll take a case off me, other times they'll shift a deadline.

But you need an approachable manager. You don’t want to have to take a deep breath before walking into the meeting.

I’ve had brilliant managers and difficult ones. I'm okay doing a difficult job and not having the best colleagues in the world, but the manager is everything.

I think my managers have gotten better as I've gotten older. Or maybe I've gotten braver. I’ve been off sick twice, once for six weeks and once for six months. I’m never going back to that place again. Chronic stress is by far the worst thing I’ve experienced.

'Don’t do voluntary work'

So the advice I’d give is simple: don’t do voluntary work.

It feels really reductive to say this, but if you go off sick, your work gets covered. You are replaceable.

Everyone says, “Oh, my case..”, but it's not your case. It’s the local authority’s case and you're working it. You are not solely responsible for these people. That’s the truth.

It’s not your fault that you’re feeling run down.