The transition from student to professional: emotional intelligence

I’ve come to another transition in my career as today marks the end of my student placement, my last ever day and in a week’s time, I’ll begin my career as a keyworker pending my registration and then as a social worker, in a LAC team, exactly where I wanted to be.

I should be excited and I am – I’m intrigued to find out which cases I’ll be getting. I’m keeping one teenager who I have worked with for the past 6 months but the rest will all be new. But I’m also quite apprehensive. 

Over the last few months I have absolutely loved what I have been doing, but I have also come to see the emotional impact that the role can have and the importance of good supervision. I have been lucky to have had a very warm and caring supervisor, ready to listen to  me the following day if I messaged her after a tough evening session with a young person. However, it’s hard to know what my new team will hold, and although I can see many positives about the new pod model – particularly the benefits of gaining the perspective of many more professionals to help with decision making, I wonder whether it will allow for the same warmth, or potential for reflection or containment that one on one supervision has the power to do.

I have also already seen a colleague off sick a lot, ‘fatigued’ ,having been pretty new to the team, and I’m aware that there will be a big jump between the protected caseload that I have been holding and the cases that will greet me shortly. In addition, I feel the huge sense of responsibility that comes with this role – as well as the privilege that accompanies it, the privilege of working with some of these young people who inspire me on a regular basis.

I’ve been asking on twitter for tips and strategies that people have used to cope with the emotional element of the role. I’ve been told about the importance of supervision, reflection, work life balance. I’ve been told about the importance of creating a network of other professionals with whom you can be honest about feelings around your cases.  This is a big one for me. I’ve been lucky to have a fellow student and friend working alongside me on this placement, and certainly in my past career in advertising, my colleagues became my friends and we used to sit and discuss all our work, and that didn’t hold the emotional element. I think this is such an important support network for us as social workers.

One tip that my practice educator gave me which I think could be useful if you have the self-discipline to put into practice, is to identify a landmark on your way home from work, and when you hit that landmark, tell yourself to switch off from work from this point.

It will be interesting to see what the future brings but I feel ridiculously lucky, to have managed to change career to be a social worker and to have gained a job in the exact team that I wanted. I absolutely love working with children and young people and I want to make sure that I continue to keep the wishes and feelings of my young people at the heart of everything, and keep advocating for them, regardless of the bureaucratic challenges I may face.

Here’s hoping to a fulfilling and inspiring career, and the hope that I can make a difference, however small, to the lives of many people!