Pandemic Impact

 

Something that has been discussed a lot the last 2 years or so is the impact that the pandemic has had on Social Work practice.

A lot of the conversations around this both with colleagues and in the research or articles that have been written about it focus on how it has impacted the Social Worker. Both in their day-to-day practice but also the impact it has had on their work life balance, mental health, and stress levels.

It has definitely had this impact because the way that people are used to working have been taken away at very short notice and everyone has had to adapt to new ways of working. I do think that a lot of the focus have been on the professionals and how they are managing but when doing some minor research prior to writing this post I could not find anything from the people who access services about how they have found receiving Social Work support in the pandemic.

I know that in general the pandemic has increased levels of loneliness, domestic violence, and mental health concerns. I presume that these are also true for the people we work with. Especially the older people who can only access the community with support and will have had to isolate at the beginning of the pandemic due to their age meaning they are in the high-risk category. For people comfortable with technology a change to using online video calling services would have been easier and the best of a bad situation. Although it is not the same as seeing someone in person and being able to share a hug at least you can see their face. So much of communication is non-verbal and you lose all of them when you cannot see someone.

I read a few articles about the experiences of Social Work staff in the pandemic and a lot of them commented that when they go to visit someone, they are not just going to see what information they get from the conversation, they are going to see how they live, what they have access to and they know who is present. Whereas on a video call although you can see someone you can only see the box of their life that they have allowed you to see. You wouldn’t be able to see if there was someone else in the room or that box is the only tidy part of the room. It is similar to what you see on social media which is a glimpse of someone’s life and only the one they are willing for you to see.

It also opened up the conversation about how invasive it can feel when you are doing a video call and showing some of your house to the people who are on that call with you. As time has gone on people have learnt more about using digital technology instead and how a lot of the video sharing applications allow you to blur your background or use a fake one so they can mitigate that feeling of invasiveness. I personally choose not to use those capabilities because I am fortunate to have an office space where only I am. 4 out of 5 of my working days I am in the house alone anyway so no chance of anyone else walking past. Plus, I know that my background is a shelf of board games which other than letting people know I enjoy them doesn’t really share anything about my home life. I do not have photographs or personal mementos in the background, so it does not feel as invasive.

Don’t get me wrong I can also see some benefits in interacting remotely from my experience of being on placement when the first pandemic hit which got cut short and then working for that agency for a few months over the summer before I went back to university.

I was involved in running a group for women living with HIV and I found that between me running it in person to changing to online the attendance increased and I think part of this was the option to not turn on a camera if they did not want to but also not having to find people to care for children and then have to travel to attend the sessions. I also found that when I first started in my current team when I was on placement in some instances it gave me back some time. For people that could manage to chat comfortably over the phone instead of travelling to them, spending time there and travelling back it ended up that I could speak with them for longer instead because I did not have to factor in the travel time also.

There are positives and negatives in any type of working style that we use and we are currently going on more face to face visits with people but even then we have been only going if they are essential and cannot be completed in another way so we are nowhere near back to pre-pandemic levels but it does feel to be getting there.