the emotional experience of working in social services - an analysis

1. Dear diary: the emotional experience of
working in social services

2. Overview
The diaries from the View from Here project:
• Part of a cultural probe - a creative, and qualitative, research process
• Designed to encourage unprompted reflection
• Create new knowledge about the emotional experiences of practitioners
We wanted to hear directly from the people providing services and support - in their own
words - about the experiences that are meaningful to them

3. The importance of story

6. Emotions
• Emotions are a way of seeing the world: “like hearing or seeing, feeling provides a
useful set of clues in figuring out what is real” (Hochschild, 1983, p.31)
• We take inspiration from Dorothy Smith who uses the term ‘work knowledges’
• Focuses attention on “a person’s experience of and in their own work — what they
do, how they do it, including what they think and feel” (Smith 2005, p.151)
• In this way, we view the participant’s reflections as a form of expertise — a way of
understanding the social care sector from the ground up.

7. Three reflections

8. 1.Emotions are a prompt
• Emotions have “signal” function — that they acts as “clues” to how people make
sense of their experience (Hochschild 1983, p.28-34).
• The emotional quality of these diaries was an unexpected feature of this research.
• We did not prompt participants to reflect on their emotional experience of work —
but that is exactly what they have done in these journals.

9. 2. Emotions show the wider context
• Second, emotions do more than tell individual stories of the experience of working
in social services- they signal us to look at the context which surrounds practitioners
who work closest with people accessing support.
• Supervision, ill-health at work, I.T. systems - each of these has a bearing on the way
individuals come to understand and experience their work.
• Likewise, the relationships (and emotions they prompt) between practitioners and
people accessing support, or between members of a team, have a strong influence
on the experience of this work.

10. 3. Reflection integrates knowing and feeling
• We suggest that these diaries reflect the emotional sensemaking that occurs during
reflective practice (Schon 1983).
• Participants describe the value of the View from Here project in their diaries
• Emphasised the need for practitioners to find time to make sense of their own and
experiences.
• This integration of knowing and feeling can occur when there is time/space to reflect.

12. Method
The diaries offer an space for reflection - directed by the author not the researcher
1. We began with the concept of emotions and coded for ‘feeling words’ within the
diary entries
1. We transcribed the relevant quotations and validated analysis internally
2. We coded for ‘drivers’ to illustrate the reasons for the writer’s expression of emotion
3. We reviewed and sense-checked our analysis to ensure robustness

13. What is the emotional experience of practitioners?
• Not a simple story to tell
• Emotions were mixed, complex and driven by a variety of personal and environmental
factors
1. Frustrated - sometimes meaning hard, difficult, stressed (87 codes out of a total of 522)
2. Happy- sometimes meaning happy and enjoyment (62 / 522)
3. Worried (59 / 522)
4. Tired (43 / 522)
5. Disappointed - sometimes meaning sad and upset (32 / 522)
6. Proud - sometimes meaning appreciated and admiring (24 / 522)

14. What drives these emotions?
 Working with people
 Life at work
 Personal wellbeing

15. Working with people
• Supporting people to achieve their outcomes (like social outings, diet changes, new housing)
made people feel proud and rewarded. Facing barriers along the way led to feelings of
frustration.
• Practitioners were concerned with the overall wellbeing of the people they support (physical
and mental health). Emotional response to wellbeing was mixed, with the most frequent
emotion being challenging/difficult. However, rewarding, happiness and pride featured in the
same dominance. Practitioners have an in-depth knowledge of peoples wellbeing and needs.
• Relationships with people who access support are extremely important. Unsurprisingly,
positive relationships lead to positive emotions (rewarding being the most common with
happiness/joy coming second). Some practitioners struggled with the impact of some of the
behaviours and choices of the people they supported.

17. Life at work
• The tasks people do at work (like specific support, finding placements, etc.) impact on the
emotional response:
• People are happiest when working with people.
• A quarter (25/93) of all of the entries that discussed work tasks focuses on a lack of time
and an inability to complete tasks – leading to feeling challenged and worried.
• Relationships with colleagues and managers matter to practitioners, and are a mixed bag.
• Some lead to feelings of reward / happiness (10/46).
• Challenging relationships lead to feelings of frustration (8/46).
• Technology is mentioned 7 times, always as a deficit or frustration

18. Life at work
• Travel (commuting, bus schedules, etc.) led to frustration, tiredness and challenges for staff.
What’s missing?
• Training is only mentioned twice in the whole dataset, perhaps indicating its limited impact on
the emotional experience of practitioners on a day-to-day basis.
• There was limited discussion within the diaries about terms and conditions such as patterns of
shift work, pay, etc.
• This driver only appears 25 times, but leads to feelings of frustration and
tiredness/exhaustion. We think it’s interesting that this is so low.
• Could we say that there is a lot that can be done to improve the emotional experience of
work that isn’t about money?

20. Personal Wellbeing
• Work-life balance was a challenge for most people. Happiness was related to spending time
away from work and taking breaks. It was clear in this section that there was a weariness in
people's experience, practitioners spoke about being worried, thinking about work outside of
working hours and personally responsible for not keeping a work/life balance.
• Health in the workplace was also a concern. There were 14 mentions of ill health, or concern
about the poor health of others which led to worry and exhaustion

22. Conclusions
• We felt that the emotional labour of care (both the joy and the challenge) weighed
heavily on practitioners, and spilled over into their personal lives.
• Practitioners find joy and pride in what they do, mostly through seeing the people
they support achieve outcomes and through building meaningful relationships with
the people they support and work with.
• However, we need to recognise the tremendous day to day stress and difficulty that
these diaries presented, which showed a workforce feeling overwhelmed by
increasing workload and lack of emotional and practical support in the work they do.

23. A novel approach?
• To our knowledge, this is the first research project to focus on the emotional
experiences of social work and social care staff in Scotland through diaries
• Diaries are most commonly used to understand the experiences of people accessing
health and social care (e.g. Jacelon and Imperio 2005)
• Where diaries have been used to explore staff experiences in the UK - they are
sometimes used as an exploratory evaluation tool (e.g. Leigh et al 2005)
• The University of the West of Scotland and Belinda Dewar in particular have been
using the emotional touchpoints method

24. Our own reflections
• We have our own personal experience of care
• Felt validating to see our own experiences reflected and have the chance to remember
and relate
• Invested in peoples lives through their diaries
• Grateful to have been invited into your world for a week, and to be able to share some
of that learning

25. References
• Hochschild, A.R., 1983. The managed heart: commercialization of human
feeling, Berkeley, Calif. ;London: University of California Press.
• Smith, D.E., 2005. Institutional ethnography : a sociology for people, Toronto:
AltaMira Press.
• Schön, D.A., 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in
Action. Basic Books.

26. Thank you