Working Conditions and Well-Being across the COVID Pandemic in UK Social (Care) Workers

ABSTRACT

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, social work and social care practitioners had some the worst working conditions of any sector in the UK. During the pandemic, data revealed that social care occupations had higher COVID infection and mortality rates than the general population. The article reports the changing working conditions (measured via the Work-Related Quality of Life scale) and well-being (measured via the Short Warwich-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale) of UK social care and social workers across three timepoints between May 2020 and July 2021 through an online cross-sectional survey of working conditions and well-being. Analysis of variance demonstrated that both well-being and working conditions were significantly poorer in July 2021 (phase 3 [n = 1,606]) than the previous two phases (n = 2,523 and n = 2,424, respectively), suggesting that both working conditions and well-being worsened within the social care and social work workforce across the pandemic. Furthermore, each of career satisfaction, working conditions, control, general well-being and home-work interface predicted poorer well-being at Time 3. Whilst chronically poor working conditions can lead to poorer individual psychological and physiological health outcomes, our findings highlight continually poor conditions in this sector, with potential further impacts on organisations and the service users that social care workers support. It is therefore important that individuals, organisations and government develop mechanisms to support these critical workers during and following the pandemic. It is well known that having working conditions which are in a poor state over an extended period of time can impact the physical and mental health of employees. Across the pandemic, UK social workers and social care employees have been described as key and/or critical workers by the UK government. However, for a variety of reasons those working in these sectors had higher COVID-19 infection and death rates than the general population. The aim of this article is to chart the working conditions of UK social work and social care workers between May 2020 and July 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that working conditions and well-being got consistently worse across the pandemic. Also, in July 2021, job satisfaction, working conditions, control, general well-being and home-work interface each predicted poorer psychological well-being. We suggest that, because of the relationship between poor working conditions, well-being and the physiological and psychological health of social workers and care workers, interventions should be put in place to support the deteriorating working conditions of these key workers. Doing so would lead to better outcomes for individual workers, their employers and ultimately service users.