by Elena Nicolaou

My visits to families are often the most enjoyable part of my week.

I like the listening, relationship-building, direct work and insight that comes from home visits.

I do not, however, like timescales (who does?!), but understand the necessity of them for safeguarding. In my current role, I have the standard fortnightly child protection visits, and child in need visits every 20 days.

The difficulty I often find is trying to fit everything I need to discuss with the family into one visit. I find myself thinking, ‘How have four weeks gone by already?’, and, ‘How has my list of things to address doubled?’.

Leaving on time

Pictured: Elena Nicolaou

I try to create plans, but my busy reality means I often end up planning just before a visit or on my way there, if at all. The reasons behind this are the usual suspects – too many meetings, too much admin, no admin staff to help with the admin, too many emails etc.

Another problem is that the time allocated never seems like enough. I often schedule an hour for my visits and struggle to get out of the door.

Sometimes, the families have something to do and they’re trying to rush me, but this is definitely in the minority. They usually have a lot to say and it’s quite a skill to leave on time, and even get there on time (I’m late 95% of the time).

It’s a balancing act. I’m usually honest that I have another visit or meeting to get to and state this openly.  But if I’m making progress on a crucial discussion or a child is upset, I try to stay and then leave when things are more settled.

I had an occasion recently, though, when this wasn’t possible. I felt so awful knowing that a child was crying and I couldn’t stay to comfort them, but it was the end of the day and I had to pick up a family member.

Social workers and counsellors

I’ve been reflecting on the parallels with therapists and counsellors. With every therapist I have ever worked with, the sessions always end on time, without fail.

Naturally, they don’t have the same safeguarding duties as social workers, but I think we can learn from the techniques they use. These include, when appropriate, referencing time after the midway point, summarising key points near the close of the session and making references to the next meeting.

Much like therapists, we need to feel comfortable leaving sessions that aren’t ‘finished’ in uncomfortable places or with issues left unresolved.

Of course, I wouldn’t want you to think I’m advocating for leaving a family during a crisis, where the police are about to be called. Safety is paramount.

But I do think families need to have realistic expectations of what social workers can do during their working hours. Part of this, for me, is understanding the pressures social workers are under.

This is not a topic that warrants taking up precious time during a home visit. But being clear with families about your schedule can help.

Setting boundaries

Photo by AdobeStock/stanciuc

I tend to explain working hours, provide the emergency duty team number and mention my work phone not being turned on 24/7. I have not had any families who did not understand this.

I do offer flexibility, though, and if families can only see me at 6pm because of work or other commitments, then I comply. I take the time back on another day.

Good outcomes for families are what we want, and time is key to achieving that; time to advocate, to make referrals, to listen and to do reflective work with them.

As social workers, we are part of a wider network of professional support that they receive. We need to understand what our role is, and isn’t, what we can do in our home visits and what needs to be done by universal services – and by families themselves.

Recently, during  a home visit, I had to set a firm boundary with a teenager with additional needs (autism spectrum), who had kept repeating questions we had discussed multiple times.

After reminding him of our previous conversation and the actions we had agreed on, I then explained that I had to leave due to another appointment. His younger sibling also wanted to chat and play, which would have been an enjoyable interlude, but not a possible one at that time.

In another instance, I had an office visit scheduled with a mother to complete important paperwork and discuss updates on care planning and interventions for her child, who had become looked after.

We had an hour and a half scheduled in but were coming to the end of the session and had not managed to complete all the paperwork. So, instead of carrying on as I might have done when I was newly qualified, I booked another appointment.

Making compromises, thinking creatively and being able to ask for what is needed is essential. We are social workers, but we also need to respect our own time boundaries and that seek that elusive work/life balance.

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I learnt early on that social work can easily control you if you let it. I would often find myself losing focus, answering every call, and checking emails the second they came in, even at the expense of taking a toilet break or keeping hydrated! I would move from writing assessments to making calls and this, along with neglecting my basic wellbeing, would lead me to feel fatigued, especially by the end of the day.

Time-batching

Something that helped me was implementing time-batching into my daily routine wherever possible. This involves trying to group similar tasks to improve focus and productivity. I find that assessments tend to be the most intensive tasks, taking a lot of thought processing, and if I mix writing these with phone calls in between, it seems like they never get done.

Considering this practically, I know that the beginning of the day is when I feel most refreshed and focused, which is why I schedule assessments at the start of the day.

Kayleigh Rose Evans © KRE

This also works well as I am a social worker on an adults’ community team and a lot of times I am calling or visiting care homes where they don’t want to speak to me until after breakfast! You can’t always follow this plan, but I have found it useful to keep in the back of my mind.

The book Eat That Frog by Bryan Tracy has also been helpful because it suggests tackling our most urgent tasks first to avoid experiencing increased anxiety and reduced productivity.

I put this to the test and found that it applies to my experience with social work. I find disputes around finances challenging, especially if I feel like the person on the other end of the phone is trying to trip me up or is taking notes about everything I am saying.

As a result, I would often find myself leaving the task I flipped this around and started focusing on these tasks earlier wherever possible, which has transformed my practice. I noticed that as soon as that task was out of the way, I felt more motivated.

Why a ‘to-do’ list didn’t work for me

When we think about organisational strategies it’s easy for your mind to just be drawn to the classic to-do list. However, with the unpredictable nature of our profession, I question whether social work always fits this linear way of working.

Having a ‘to-do’ list can feel great on the days when you are able to get through and tick tasks off. But it doesn’t work as well when – one minute, you are concentrating on writing an assessment, then get a phone call which you need to case note and the next thing, you are flying out of the door on a crisis visit!

This often left me stuck with a load of incomprehensible notes on various pages, even when my list was well-intentioned and neat at the outset. It also led to a sense of confusion with what order to do things in as everything seemed urgent, and this led me to feel overwhelmed and that I was never achieving enough.

My light-bulb moment

I found that categorising the information helped me to feel empowered and in control, safe in the knowledge that every commitment I have made and task yet to finish will be achieved.

Below is the template I use, with pseudonyms and false scenarios to indicate my system. I adjust this template over time, depending on the priorities of my role. This template has helped me a lot as I genuinely was concerned that I couldn’t do social work if I didn’t find a way to remember all the information I was juggling! Hopefully, this stimulates thoughts for you to develop your own trusted system.

Ⓒ Kayleigh Rose Evans

Colour-coding system

The colour-coding system helps to prioritise work. If some cases are progressing well in the ‘fine for now’ column, it can create the headspace to look at those that need to be prioritised, in the red and pink section.

Allowing flexibility is a requirement because situations quickly change and therefore, it can be adjusted through the day, as unexpected events happen. The template is also a useful tool that allows you to reflect on why you may feel overwhelmed on certain days. If you have lots of ‘reds’, it may indicate that you need to get some support.

I try and leave myself a short period to update this table each day, which may seem like a waste of time but in reality, I am far more effective when using it. It also promotes my wellbeing as it means that I don’t have to keep as much in my head, providing a cut-off at the end of the day.

It’s a working document which I save a copy of and date each day. The reality is that I don’t always have a chance to do this daily, but even if left until the end of the week, it works as a tool to run through and trigger my memory from the process of updating it whenever I can.

No one-size-fits-all solution 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to organising a large and complex caseload in social work. It’s an individual thing and depends on what you are doing and how you work best. It’s also not to minimise the extent to which it is impossible to manage an unworkable workload but under the right circumstances, with appropriate support in place, I hope this can help people think about strategies for thriving in contemporary practice.

Want to read more career development tips, from Kayleigh and other social work peers? Check out our Careers Zone 

Kayleigh provides more tips for practitioners and students on her YouTube channel.