What is the nature and impact of workplace friendships within child protection social work? Implications for emotional support, professional learning, job satisfaction and worker wellbeing

Abstract

Stakeholders continue to express concern about the state of crisis facing the UK’s social work workforce, with statutory children’s services being an area causing particular apprehension. Here, high sickness and vacancy rates, and large agency costs are consistently being linked with poor working conditions, inadequate resources, limited time with children, and practitioners reporting a poor sense of ‘work-life balance’. Whilst suggested reforms have focussed on reducing workloads, improved investment of resources, enhanced supervision and managerial support, reputational enhancement, and safer staffing levels, there has been limited research into the impact of workplace friendships, nor their role in mitigating for different sources of job stress. This article seeks to address this knowledge gap. It reports on the findings of a qualitative study with twenty-five child protection social workers. Implications that emerge are of the role that workplace friendships play in providing emotional support and a source for professional learning amongst social workers—and that this can help mitigate for sources of job stress and burnout; their positive impact on job satisfaction, worker wellbeing and practitioners’ propensity to remain in the role; and the importance of working environments that promote close contact and proximity between work colleagues of different levels of experience.