‘Burning brightly should never mean burning out’
Burnout in social work is no longer a marginal or uncomfortable issue quietly acknowledged but rarely addressed; it is one of the defining challenges facing the profession today.
After almost two decades working in the profession I have witnessed burnout unfold repeatedly. Highly capable practitioners, often those most deeply invested in the work, reach a point where exhaustion, moral distress, and cumulative pressure outweigh their ability to continue.
Over a two-year period, I undertook a national survey exploring the prevalence and experience of burnout in social work, with nearly 200 respondents contributing.
One statistic stood out starkly: over 80 per cent reported having experienced burnout.
Practitioners spoke of chronic fatigue, anxiety, sleep disturbance, emotional numbing, and the erosion of professional confidence. Many described feeling unable to speak openly about their struggles for fear of judgement or professional consequence.
They were expected to absorb risk, trauma, and responsibility while maintaining a composed professional exterior. When cracks began to show, the response was often to “push through” rather than to pause and reflect.
Why people leave
Social workers do not leave the profession because they stop caring. They leave because caring becomes unsustainable in systems that rarely pause to ask what it costs. Increasing numbers of practitioners exit quietly through sickness absence, early retirement or career changes, often carrying shame. Burnout is a significant driver of this loss, and yet it is still too often treated as an individual issue rather than a systemic one.
Social work has always been demanding, but the current climate has intensified pressures in unprecedented ways. Rising complexity, chronic understaffing, increasing scrutiny, and ongoing reform have created environments where many practitioners feel constantly behind, perpetually accountable, and rarely able to pause. While resilience is frequently invoked, it is too often framed as an individual responsibility rather than a shared, systemic one.
Burnout is not a momentary lapse or a bad week. It is a cumulative condition shaped by workload, organisational culture, exposure to trauma, moral distress, and insufficient recovery time. When left unaddressed, it strips practitioners of energy, clarity, and confidence and ultimately, of their capacity to stay.
A personal journey
I qualified as a social worker in March 2010 and have worked exclusively in children’s social care ever since. Over time, I progressed from frontline practice into management. With each step came greater responsibility, broader oversight, and, unintentionally, greater exposure to strain. While the pressures of frontline practice are widely acknowledged, the emotional and ethical weight of management roles is often underestimated. It was in this space that burnout finally caught up with me.
Burnout accumulates. In August 2018, my body intervened where my thinking would not. After months of relentless pressure, I was hospitalised following a breakdown.
Burnout is often spoken about in emotional terms, but it is profoundly physical. My own experience involved constant pain, exhaustion that sleep could not relieve, headaches, blurred vision, and emotional numbness. Perhaps most distressing was the sense of detachment from the work, from others, and from myself. The work I once found meaningful felt hollow. That is one of burnout’s cruellest effects: it convinces you that your purpose has evaporated.
Like many colleagues, I ignored early warning signs. Meals were skipped. Breaks were sacrificed. Work followed me home and into weekends. Even illness became something to “manage around.” I returned to work sooner than I should have after my breakdown, driven by a belief that pausing was somehow irresponsible. This pattern is not unique.
The role of systems and leadership
Burnout cannot be addressed solely at an individual level. While personal reflection and boundary-setting are important, they are insufficient without supportive organisational cultures. Supervision, leadership, workload management, and psychological safety all play a crucial role in either mitigating or exacerbating burnout.
Too often, social workers are encouraged to practise self-care in environments that structurally undermine it. Organisations must move beyond performative wellbeing initiatives and towards meaningful cultural change, where reflection is protected, supervision is restorative, and staff wellbeing is seen as integral to practice quality rather than ancillary to it.
If social work is to remain viable as a profession, it must attend not only to outcomes and accountability, but to the wellbeing of those who deliver the work.
Burning brightly should never require burning out.
Oyeyinka Olaniran is an independent social work consultant with almost two decades of practice across frontline services, safeguarding, leadership, and independent social work. His new book A Social Work Survival Guide to Avoiding Burnout has just been published