Thoughts on Social Work and Changing the Language of Burn-Out

Changing the language of "burn out."

I woke up this morning to attend a very frustrating meeting, where in addition to becoming very annoyed, I was also fed coffee, a potent combination, plus sleeplessness, a deadly cocktail…

I've been reflecting lately as I have begun a new youth outreach position with a queer service provider in SF, about my relationship to the non profit industry. There is so much to figure out and so much to say, but one thing that strikes me as I have these queries, is how much the phrase "burn out" echoes through my head, and to what degree I have allowed myself to chalk up my criticisms to this oft-cited phenomenon that doesn't begin to account for or articulate the dissatisfactions, criticisms, and total existential crises that can be brought on by work in the NPIC.

It is commonly assumed that workers do and even will, leave the non profit industry because they "get burnt out." There is a certain degree to which I've internalized this thinking and today, as I was weaving my bike in and out of traffic on Market, reciting to myself a litany of curses reserved for the useless, misdirected, self-serving bureaucracy that my current, former, and conceivably, future jobs will be tangled up in, I realized something: I have a lot of energy. Tearing up Market on my bicycle in a craze of caffeine I just kept thinking to myself, "You know, fuck that. I have so much energy. I am not used up. I am so far from used up. That is not why this shit bothers me."

The term "burnt out," may aptly describe part of what is going on when social service and non profit industries use up workers and excuse general abuses of workers by assuming the employee feels privileged to be doing "meaningful work." I am not proposing "burn out" not be used, because, yeah, I mean, people get tired. But overall, I think it really serves to dilute critical analysis and displace blame for the ineffectiveness of services, lack of accountability in agencies, and abuses of clients and workers.

It assumes on some level (in the case of social work) that clients' problems are just too big to be handled, and that social workers leave because the work is just too much, the clients are too much, the problems are too large, or that they lack commitment. Sadly, the problems that may account for "burn out" are much larger and more complex.

For starters, I know I would like to feel useful at work. Especially in an industry where workers put up with odd hours, major job instability, the continued imperative to hustle to secure the existence of their position, unpaid hours, inadequate compensation, lack of supervision, complicated, often emotionally manipulative, work environments, and in many fields, traumatizing work experiences, under the premise of "meaning" or "usefulness" I would venture to guess many workers feel the similarly.

Many of us like working with our client populations, and are fed by our relationships with our clients. At my last job, I worked as a residential case manager in an SRO in the Tenderloin. I found the work with clients quite stimulating and heartening, which ran counter to the idea that working with formerly homeless adults, many of whom had several mental health diagnoses and were actively using is supposed to be exhausting.

In fact, what exhausted me were dangerous levels of understaffing, lack of safety and crisis protocol, lack of appropriate support, supervision, and staff training. Even more exhausting was witnessing my clients be continually mistreated by supportive housing property management, benefits administrations, and community agencies where they were seeking drug treatment, or mental health services. And realizing that my positions of service coordination like mine were ineffective in addressing issues with client access, mistreatment, and ineffectiveness in service provision. Indeed, some of the only meaningful or effective work that felt possible there was helping to build relationships of social and community support between tenants within the building. This was not really part of my job description and it has absolutely nothing to do with why the position was funded.

At my current job, sparing you the details, I am charged with connecting youth to services provided by therapists. The therapists provide valuable services. The resources needed to build connections between youth seeking these services and clinicians do exist at this time, however, due the quagmire of billing practices, productivity, and city contracts, I lack the power to move or place any resources that would actually foster those connections—in short, to do my job.

Further, I am confused by an industry that assumes that the work is somehow removed from the process of producing and protecting wealth, and uses false pretense as a way of manipulating workers. As a worker in supportive housing, and as social workers in general, the major reason the jobs are funded is to manage the costs of destructive processes of domination that produce wealth and profit: military aggression (and the subsequent issues of PTSD and other health problems among veterans, as well as refugee populations), sexist domination, joblessness (and it's direct relationship to profit), incarceration, drug trade and criminalization, and so many others. It is clear that social workers have a direct role in producing and protecting wealth by literally cutting the cost of wealth and domination. Why then, are we encouraged to see our trade as something other than a trade or industry? My evolving guess is that this is central to allowing the worker abuses within the industry and also to keep social workers and non profit workers from seeing themselves as valuable and taking risks in articulating real challenges to the industry structures that affect us and our clients.

To me, this is much deeper than "burn out." The problem of "burn out" is one that doesn't rest with clients, their "unmanageable" problems, or workers who just "can't take the heat" and hence need to get out of the kitchen. It is likely that as long as non profit structures as we know them exist, I will have at least some kind of on and off work relationship to them, being that I am going into the mental health field. However, I would like to say, for the record, that if I take a break, take up another trade, or look tired at the end of a week, it is not because I am burnt up or out, it is because I am tired of seeing the people I care about and make my work worthwhile and interesting (my clients) mistreated and am tired of lacking resources and power to do the work I am charged with in ways that feel meaningful, useful, and accountable.

I hope this is the beginning of a conversation and I would love to hear your thoughts, criticisms, analysis and general brilliance.

Xo,
Adele.