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Social services jobs for a high quality of life

Social worker jobs can put people through higher than average stress and burnout.  As local authorities are forced to cut spending, increasingly big caseloads in a job with strong emotional demands are placing more pressure on our social workers than ever before.  Researchers in Calgary, Canada have attempted to discover the key to happiness for those in social services jobs, with the aim that policy makers will make use of their research to make social worker jobs more attractive.  The study, by John Graham, a professor of social work at the University of Calgary, was interested in what makes these professionals happy, rather than concentrating on the well documented causes of stress.  His research will be of interest to all those who want to make sure they keep hold of their valued employees.

He was motivated by trying to keep people in social services jobs, after recent statistics showed that eight percent of teachers and 15 per cent of social workers leave their jobs each year.  Graham’s team sent a survey to 2,500 registered social workers in Alberta, and received 700 replies.  They chose the 13 ‘happiest’ social workers of those who had replied and focussed their investigation on their lives, through job shadowing and in depth interviews.

They found that the most satisfied social workers reported higher levels of fulfilment when they had flexible work schedules, work life balance and support in their jobs.  Graham noted that social workers, by their nature, are caring, sociable people.  When they experience high caseloads they need decent support in order to do their jobs well.  One of the trends reported commonly by the happiest social workers was having a high degree of freedom within their jobs, particularly having enough flexibility to balance the demands of heir jobs with their personal lives.

From victims of abuse to neglected children, people in social work jobs find themselves in all sorts of challenging circumstances every day.  This makes social services jobs demanding, but also fulfilling, as long as social workers receive enough support.  These findings have interesting implications beyond the remit of social worker jobs, as other employers might be encouraged to look at what makes their employees happy rather than tackling what makes them stressed.  As the researchers point out, everyone performs better in their role when they can find satisfaction and happiness in what they do.  The smartest way to ensure your employees achieve this is to develop organizational cultures that reinforce these principles.

Please visit http://www.sanctuarypersonnel.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.sanctuarypersonnel.com/

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Social worker jobs are fundamental to communities

Social work jobs are often much misunderstood, because social workers often end up in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. We all know that the media – tabloids especially – loves to tell a tale of tragedy and misbehaviour. But the old maxim – when you do something right, people won’t know you’ve done anything at all – might well apply to social worker jobs. Well, at least in the sense that it is unlikely for there to be headlines in the papers about what great things are being done to benefit society by people in social services jobs: it is much more likely that they will focus on the one bad example that is not at all representative of social workers in general.

But the truth is that when a social worker does his or her job well – and the majority of them do, regardless of what the papers might say – it does get noticed. Not by the journalists, cameramen or news reporters, but by the people that social work jobs are there for. It seems that amidst all of the scandalising of community jobs, especially in the public sector, most people have lost the concept of what social work actually is, and what social services jobs actually do for the communities around the country.

A social worker is there for lots of different sorts of people – perhaps another reason why most people do not have a very clear idea of what a social or care worker does. But the common thread lies in the reality that a lot of people in this country – and indeed in every country – are in a state of crisis in one form or another. Social workers are there to help them out of their crises, and therefore the job of a social worker can be as varied as the issues of the people being helped.

A significant proportion – just over half – of social services jobs are to do with supporting young people and their families. But there are several other categories of people that are helped by people in social worker jobs. They include the elderly, drug addicts and alcohol abusers, people with learning disabilities or other mental health afflictions, and young offenders. Social work jobs involve a range of activities. For instance, workers maintain regular contact with service users, in order to be able to advocate for them or to offer counselling support. They also write up reports, often in partnership with medical staff to evaluate service users’ needs.

Please visit http://www.socialworkandcarejobs.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.socialworkandcarejobs.com/

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