BEING A SOCIAL WORKER IN SOCIAL SERVICES
DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC:
A SPANISH CASE STUDY
Virginia Paéz-Izquierdo
Department of Sociology: Methodology and Theory, Faculty of Political Science and
Sociology, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Degree in Translation and Interpreting. PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Social
Work, Complutense University of Madrid. Support researcher at Department of
Sociology: Methodology and Theory.
Correspondencia: virpaez@ucm.es
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7820-6576
Mercedes Muriel-Saiz
Department of Social Work and Social Services, Faculty of Social Work,
Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Correspondencia: mm.muriel@ucm.es
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8871-9666
ABSTRACT
Covid-19 has led to a health, social and economic crisis, the like
of which has never been seen before. The world has had to tackle a
new reality that has shaken the most basic structures of our system.
In Spain the Social Services have been declared essential services
but, even so, the social workers interviewed in this study have not
perceived that this has translated into greater support for the system
or for their work. This article forms part of a national funded research
project that has developed the only tool to monitor the impact of Covid-
19 on the Social Services in Spain. Its sampling design has made it
possible to carry out 164 telephone interviews at 52 public Social
Services centres all over Spain.
The aim of this article is to ascertain the effects of the pandemic
on the daily practice of social work through the analysis of professional
discourse, and also to discuss the impact of Covid-19 with special
resumen
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attention to issues such as the irruption of telematics, the emotional
exhaustion of professional teams or the new forms of reorganisation of the
Social Services. In other words, changes in the organisational dynamics of
the centres, in the incorporation of telematics, in interpersonal relations
between the work teams, etc. Changes that will all be decisive in predicting
the course of social change in the Social Services in the coming years.
Key words: Social work, Social Services, social intervention, pandemic,
Spanish case
SER TRABAJADORA SOCIAL DE SERVICIOS SOCIALES
DURANTE LA PANDEMIA COVID19:
ANÁLISIS DEL CASO ESPAÑOL
RESUMEN
La Covid19 ha supuesto una crisis sanitaria, económica y social sin
precedentes. El mundo ha tenido que enfrentarse a una nueva realidad que
ha sacudido las estructuras más básicas de nuestro sistema. En
España se
han declarado los Servicios Sociales como servicios esenciales, pero, sin
embargo, las trabajadoras sociales entrevistadas no han percibido
que eso se
haya traducido en un mayor apoyo al sistema ni a su trabajo. Este artículo
forma parte de una investigación nacional financiada que ha desarrollado
el único monitor de impacto del Covid19 en Servicios Sociales en España.
Su diseño muestral ha posibilitado la realización de 364 entrevistas
telefónicas en 52 centros de Servicios Sociales públicos de todo el territorio
español. El objetivo de este artículo es conocer los efectos de la pandemia
en la práctica cotidiana del Trabajo Social a través del análisis de los
discursos profesionales, así como discutir el impacto de la Covid19 con
especial atención a cuestiones tales como la irrupción de la atención
telemática, el desgaste emocional de los equipos profesionales o las
nuevas formas de reorganización de los Servicios Sociales. Cambios en
las dinámicas organizacionales de los centros, en la incorporación de la
intervención telemática, en las relaciones interpersonales entre los equipos
de trabajo, etc. Cambios todos ellos determinantes para entrever el rumbo
de la intervención social en Servicios Sociales en los próximos años.
Palabras Clave: Trabajo Social, Servicios Sociales, intervención social,
pandemia, caso español
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BEING A SOCIAL WORKER
IN SOCIAL SERVICES
DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC:
A SPANISH CASE STUDY
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_ais/accioninvestigsoc.2022437428
Recibido: 18-07-2022
Aceptado: 25-10-2022
Publicado:
31
-
12
-
2022
INTRODUCTION
Social Work interventions in times of pandemic
The arrival of the pandemic has meant a turning point in the
different professional spaces that make up the labor structure in
Spain, generating new dynamics and situations hitherto unknown,
such as, for example, forcing more than 40% of the working
population to telework, a figure for the Spanish context
unimaginable before the pandemic (Ruiz, 2021). Social Work has
also been directly affected in its daily functions by the
consequences of Covid19, since its daily practice has had to
respond to the urgent social needs of the most vulnerable
population groups (Redondo et al., 2021) with a marked increase
in demand, even tripling in the first months of confinement
(Calzada et al., 2021). All this has been complicated by the
mandate to obey the different measures and protocols established
from the political sphere (Dominelli, 2021), despite the fact that
on numerous occasions, these political indications seemed
contradictory to the nature and culture of Social Work, as
understood by Epstein (2001).
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In the specific case of Spain, with the obligation of strict
lockdown in March 2020, Social Services were also recognized
as essential services, a historic and novel fact in the European
context (General Council of Social Work, 2020). In this way,
social workers were considered essential professionals, since
Social Services is the professional context where most social
workers work, and the different autonomous laws of Spanish
Social Services contemplate that the social worker is the
professional of reference
1
in this system (Ministry of Health, Social
Services and Equality, 2013). However, despite the importance
of the work of social workers during this crisis, their professional
commitment has not been as recognized nor has it received the
same interest or the same media coverage; in fact, there are
hardly any significant studies from the world of social research
(Redondo et al, 2020). In this sense, this text aims to change this
dynamic, collecting, making visible and recognizing from the
discourse of the social workers of Social Services themselves,
how this year and a half of intervention in pandemic has been and
how, in this unknown framework of health emergency, they were
able to quickly reorganize the way of working carried out for
decades, in order to ensure the attention to the users in a
telematic way.
Telematic care is precisely one of the greatest challenges
faced by Social Services during these months, since it is a system
based mainly on direct attention and relationship with people
(Morilla et al., 2021), with proximity in direct treatment as its most
recognizable hallmark. In fact, at first, as a consequence of such
abrupt changes, social workers experienced situations of
disorder, misinformation and the impossibility of knowing what
would await them the following day, all reasonable sensations as
1
This means that every user accessing the public Social Services system in Spain
will have a social worker as a reference, who will be the professional in charge of attending
the first demand from a primary care level. This person maintains the attention or refers
to specialized care, but always ensuring comprehensiveness, continuity and stability in
the design of the social intervention (Carmona and Fernández, 2020).
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a consequence of a sudden crisis situation in institutional
contexts, according to Schlemenson (1998). However, as the
weeks went by, these same professionals narrated their
adaptation to the “new normality”, thus becoming aware of the
capacity of Social Work to respond to the unpredictable social
order, as a characteristic of a profession accustomed to managing
in contexts of uncertainty and imprecision (Carballeda, 2020).
New forms of organization and the effects of teleworking
in Social Services
Social Services have faced a situation of global crisis with a
position of generalized weakness, as it is the public social
protection system that has suffered the greatest cutbacks in
recent decades in the Spanish context (Martínez and Pérez,
2015). This sustained situation of lack of resources has
exacerbated the current health and social crisis. It has become
more evident the need to reinforce a deeply beaten and ignored
system from the political class, which tends to be seen as a well
of social spending with no obvious direct benefit. “The collapse of
the System when addressing social demand, has shown
dramatic situations of social vulnerability that demand public
authorities and society, in order to defend and strengthen the
System the challenges that the Social Services face” (De las
Heras, 2020, p. 46).
The high incidence during the spring of 2020 in the territories
of Italy and Spain forced these countries to take health protection
measures against the clock, having the opportunity for greater
foresight than other countries in the European context whose
health effects were slower (Moreno-Manzano and Ordiales,
2020). In this line, Social Services never imagined they would find
themselves in such a situation. From one day to the next, they
started to manage all the files and direct care by telephone from
their homes, not always with the appropriate material
equipment
to be able to carry out the tasks. Although it should be
mentioned
that little by little there was a process of improvement of material
equipment and training in new technologies. These
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improvements were more visible especially from Autumn 2021
(Calzada et al., 2021). To this new anomalous situation, it must
be added that, in the context analyzed, almost 90% of Social
Work professionals were women, according to data from the
General Council of Social Work (2021). Thus, the gender gap and
the effects of teleworking directly affected the development of the
profession, since teleworking as a working formula has often
proved to be a burden of labor invisibilization for many
professional women, even claiming that they were imposed an
unbearable third working day.
Another of the issues identified as relevant, among the
telematic consequences of the new forms of organization in Social
Services, has to do directly with the high levels of the digital gap
existing in the Spanish context, both among professionals and
especially among the user population. On the one hand, the fact
that social workers themselves find it difficult to manage in digital
environments, with a clear lack of digital competencies, has been
a direct obstacle to the exercise of their functions, directly affecting
the rest of the staff who did have this knowledge. On the other
hand, and regarding the technological inequality of the target
population of Social Services, the latest national survey conducted
by the INE (National Statistics Institute of Spain, 2021) gives a
detailed figure of the warning of Red Cross Spain (2021), which
shows that 63.8% of Spanish households in need of social
intervention do not have a computer and that almost 50% of these
households do not even have any Internet service. This situation
has seriously hampered the continuity of many interventions.
However, faced with this new situation, Social Work has reinvented
itself by developing new tools and techniques to deal with these
situations (Bright, 2020) such as, for example, making
administrative processes more flexible by allowing the sending of
documentation by WhatsApp, the generation of online spaces for
psychosocial support groups, or telephone support also as
effective interventions in certain situations. According to King et al
(2021), “telephonic, and other options should be considered when
internet access or client intent, confidence, or capability are low”
(p. 6). The discussion now is how far, in what way and at what
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price the irruption of new technologies should be accepted. In
much the same way as the use of technology without any reflection
had been criticized in other fields such as pedagogy and education
(Castañeda et al., 2020), it seems advisable to carry out this
process to weight the losses involved in the uncritical acceptance
of new technologies in the daily practice of Social Work.
Working conditions and professional care in Social
Services: an unfinished business
According to Dominelli (2021b), the Covid19 crisis has made
visible the difficulties of maintaining social cohesion. Additionally,
it served to spotlight that Social Work professionals face other
people’s situations -but also their own-. These interactions take
place in degraded spaces, heavily affected by socioeconomic
environments where labor and personal precariousness is
progressively evident, largely as a direct effect of neoliberal
politics carried over for decades in terms of social protection.
“Social workers have risen to the challenges, providing services
with inadequate personal protective equipment and limited
supervision and support” (p. 7).
In this sense, the need to improve the working conditions of
social workers, specifically in the context analyzed in this research
(Social Services) is more necessary than ever. In Spain, the
General Council of Social Work regulates that there should be no
more than 3000 inhabitants for each primary care social worker.
However, the latest research figures indicate that there are more
than 10,000 inhabitants on average for each social worker
(EAPN, 2021). If these data are placed in interaction with the
increase in demand in Social Services during the Covid19 crisis,
reaching a tripling and quadrupling in many territories, it is clear
that the overload of social workers in this work area is
unacceptable. In addition to this increase in work demands, there
were also sudden and abrupt changes in the way of understanding
social care as a result of the pandemic, which caused stress,
burnout and emotional exhaustion in social workers (Ben-Ezra
and Hamama-Raz, 2020).
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In short, the pandemic has exacerbated a lack of material and
budgetary resources in Social Services, which added to the
structural absence of care and emotional assistance to social
professionals (Moesby and Schjellerup, 2015; Bright, 2020). It
has implied an overexertion that, almost two years after the
beginning of the pandemic, continues to have effects in the form
of sick leave due to stress, anxiety or even abandonment of the
job and job change request to other areas outside the Social
Services (Negro, 2022). Mental health problems have been and
continue to be a constant issue during all these months. The
social workers interviewed have exposed on numerous occasions
feeling overwhelmed, distressed and with levels of stress never
experienced before (Morilla et al., 2021). In fact, the complex
interweaving of increased demand for care, the lack of institutional
care and the global context of the health crisis has in some cases
led many of these professionals to question their own existence,
their professional identity and whether they want to continue
practicing as social workers (Melo et al., 2021).
Context of the research
This article is part of a state research project funded by the
National Institute of Public Administration (INAP in
Spanish
), a
body under the Ministry of Finance and the Public Administration
of the Central Government of Spain and carried out by researchers
from five Spanish public universities. The main objective of this
project is to explain how the coronavirus pandemic and its
subsequent health, social and economic crisis has affected the
heterogeneous public system of Social Services in Spain. For this
purpose, an impact monitor was designed as a qualitative
measurement tool with a limited time frame (from July 2020 to
September 2021), which allowed us a real time follow-up of what
was happening in the municipal Social Services centers based on
the analysis of the discourse of the social workers interviewed.
This is the only national research funded in the Spanish context
that has analyzed the consequences of Covid19 in Social Services.
Thanks to the extensive information obtained, thematic axes
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have been identified whose importance and significance are of
great interest for the functioning and development of Social
Services in the coming years. Thus, the main objective of this
article is to know the effects of the pandemic on Social Work
professionals in Social Services. The following specific objectives
follow from this general objective: (i) To analyze the forms of
organizational adaptation of Social Work professionals from
Social Services in a situation of global health and social crisis; (ii)
To study the experiences, emotions experienced and feelings of
social workers in the context of Social Services.
Materials and methods
The research was carried out between July 2020 and
September 2021. For the sample design, six Spanish regions
were selected (Andalusia, Aragon, Balearic Islands, Castile and
Leon, Community of Madrid and the Basque Country) that have
elements that reflect the economic, socio-demographic and
political diversity of the country
2
. In each of these autonomous
communities, a random selection of municipalities was made,
stratified by the size of these territories through three categories:
small municipalities with less than 15,000 inhabitants, medium-
sized municipalities with 15,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, and,
finally, large municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. A
total of 52 municipalities were selected
3
. Of these participating
municipalities, 33% were small municipalities, 30% medium-
sized municipalities and 37% large municipalities. This sample
selection of municipalities has made it possible to ascertain the
varieties, differences and similarities between different Social
Services centers, also taking into account their location: large
2
For further information on the differences between the selected territories, the
complete report can be consulted on the web page of the research project from which this
work is derived (Calzada et al, 2021).
3
Initially, 60 participating municipalities were selected, but due to the impossibility
of continuing to participate regularly in the bimonthly interviews, the research team was
forced to dispense with the participation of 8 Social Services centers.
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densely populated cities, medium-sized cities geographically
located in the interior of Spain with their own industry and coastal
towns whose economy depends directly on the service sector
(tourism, leisure and hospitality).
Once the participating municipalities had been selected, the
coordinating offices of the centers were invited to participate. We
cannot provide data on the sample in terms of age, sex, years of
experience, etc. of the people interviewed because they could be
easily identified, and we must preserve their anonymity. We can
indicate that they are social workers who have coordination
functions and that more than 85% of the interviewees are women.
The collaborating professionals received a bimonthly call from
the research team to answer a structured telephone interview
with an identical script for all the territories in the different
participating regions. The telephone interview was chosen as the
research technique because it was impossible to travel to each
of the participating municipalities, among other reasons, due to
mobility restrictions. Thanks to the telephone interview, it has
been possible to access systematic and in-depth information,
overcoming the difficulty of a face-to-face meeting.
A specific design of the interview script was made for each
round that included, on the one hand, questions that have been
maintained throughout the project, which has allowed
comparisons to be made and the evolution of some topics to be
known (for example, the increase in demand, changes in the
profile of users or aspects related to the emotionality and
psychological discomfort of the professionals) and, on the other
hand, changing questions in each interview that responded to the
partial analysis of the discourses that have been published in
monthly reports. This way of structuring the interviews responds
to what Lázaro (2021) calls descriptive and exploratory areas.
Thus, in the interview scripts, descriptive questions and
exploratory questions were complemented and interspersed,
always starting with the descriptive ones. “It is preferable to start
with the descriptive ones to warm up the atmosphere and create
a good climate of trust” (p. 74). Descriptive areas were
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incorporated, dealing with the phenomenon under study on the
basis of questions on specific facts (situation of demand,
professional staffing, feelings experienced during the weeks in
question, special financial aid implemented, etc.). Questions
were also added in the exploratory areas, which responded to
new topics that were not foreseen in the initial scripts. Some of
the changing themes had to do with the mental health of the
population, the most unprotected population groups, the
reorganization of work centers, the absence of group and
community social work or the relations between social intervention
techniques and political leaders. It was precisely the social
workers interviewed who alerted the team of researchers to the
problems that were being generated by the need to respond to
new organizational, work and emotional situations without
previous schemes of action.
The total of 364 interviews obtained after one year and three
months of the project were transcribed and coded in the qualitative
analysis software Atlas.ti to systematize all the information
obtained and to extract the most representative discourses of
each thematic axis from which the main topics of analysis
emerge. The publication of all the bimonthly reports of the
research in open access allows the transfer of knowledge to
policy makers and society as part of the commitment to make
visible the actions of Social Work during the pandemic.
One of the main limitations of the study has to do with the
impossibility of holding all the interviews every two months, so in
some territories and in some rounds it was not possible to
complete the total number of interviews scheduled in the sample
design due to the impossibility of the interviewee to answer the
phone call due to the high workload. It is true, however, that in
the following rounds, when the intensity of the workload varied,
these people returned to the interview rounds. Another limitation
of the research refers directly to the impossibility of attending the
participating Social Services centers in person due to mobility
restrictions, thus losing the opportunity to capture the nuances
that could have been offered by the non-verbal communication of
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the professionals interviewed and the non-participant observation
of the centers analyzed.
RESULTS
“A lot of applause, but little institutional recognition. We
are exhausted and sometimes we even feel guilty for not
being able to respond to the demands.” Job insecurity and
the emotional exhaustion of social workers.
Social Work in Spain suffered greatly the consequences of
the pandemic, being also a profession that drags a high need for
recognition (Kisnerman, 1998). Throughout the interviews, the
lack of recognition of Social Work is intertwined with the lack of
institutional support for the Social Services system. Thus, allusions
to the invisibility of the social protection system are identified,
referring to feeling little or no recognition as professionals. In order
to make themselves understood, they mention the job insecurity
of social workers, the unbearable overload of tasks or the
abandonment of emotional care to the work teams.
“We have already started the pandemic at a disadvantage,
because Social Services and Social Work have always been very
discredited. You can see the exhaustion of the health workers, but
in our case, it is not visible” (Social worker from Andalusia).
One of the key elements to understand the situation of Social
Services in Spain has to do with the rate of replacement of jobs
due to retirement or sick leave, as well as the failure to comply
with the professional ratios. “The profession itself has suffered
layoffs, non-renewal of contracts, decreased wages or working
hours” (Arredondo, 2017, p. 111). The social workers denounce
that it is generalized and sustained over time, that the lack of
personnel is not covered, but the failure to cover the sick leaves
of Covid has highlighted the structural deficits of the system. The
result is that Covid sick leave has been followed by sick leave
due to physical and, above all, emotional discomfort, which has
ended up collapsing social intervention.
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“Some colleagues have been infected for more than twenty
days and there is no replacement. We have been left with only
three professionals for the whole center” (Social worker from
Castile and Leon).
“People are breaking down, bodies are breaking down. We
have several colleagues on sick leave, one who has broken her
back, the other one her neck, even problems with blood pressure
and sugar, and it’s all due to stress. I have the hypothesis that if
you don’t stop, the body stops you” (Social worker from Madrid).
The emotional distress of social workers is increasing in
Social Services, the need for professional care and supervision
is a claim that has intensified during the hardest months of the
pandemic crisis. While there is a minority that can benefit from
some kind of emotional support of professional teams, “we have
ten hours per group of emotional support, it is not much, but it is
a gesture to the teams” (Social worker from Madrid), practically
90% of the more than 50 social workers interviewed report feeling
abandoned, isolated and fragile because they consider that there
is never enough time, budget or space to assist the emotional
care of the professionals.
“I have felt overwhelmed and helpless. We were left alone,
we had no support. The feeling was the same in other centers:
feeling alone” (Social worker from Balearic Islands).
“I don’t know what it must have been like in other centers, but
here we have missed being listened to, someone telling us that
we were doing well” (Social worker from the Basque Country).
The lack of care for work teams intensified notably during the
pandemic because Covid19 also brought the loss of daily,
spontaneous and close spaces such as mid-morning breakfasts,
sharing a conversation in the hallway or a beer on Fridays at the
end of the day, customs deeply rooted in the work dynamics of
Spain and that the pandemic took away.
“Now you get into the office and you don’t have time for
anything. Before this, the mid-morning coffee break gave me a
very important respite” (Social worker from the Basque Country).
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“Before we had the relief of beer on Fridays, it was something
simple, but it helped us to build our team and to take care of each
other, but now we don’t even have that anymore. We are very
tired” (Social worker from Andalusia).
Faced with this situation of isolation, social workers innovated
by implementing informal care mechanisms such as receiving
emotional support sessions from the centers’ psychology
professionals, or by restructuring where possible the tasks,
functions and procedures assigned to them. In short, by
organizing protocols and workflows.
“Since nothing is organized from higher levels, we are
evaluating the workloads, distributing the tasks, organizing
everything a bit as a way of taking care of the team. (Social
worker from Madrid).
The psychologist from our center has care sessions with the
social workers, but this is the center’s own initiative, nothing has
been done from outside” (Social worker from Aragon).
“I’ve been helping people for months whose faces I don’t
even know”. The irruption of telematic care in Social Services
The most visible effect of the pandemic on the day-to-day
running of Social Services was the recommendation to
professionals to work from home and the consequent irruption of
teleworking. Most of the centers closed their face-to-face
services, with the exception of emergencies, maintaining the
presence of only one or two social workers per center. The arrival
of telematic attention has been one of the greatest challenges
faced by Social Services in recent years, as it is an eminently
face-to-face service whose nature is characterized by the
possibility of offering people direct treatment (Morilla et al., 2021).
The first few weeks of telematic attention were an amalgam of
feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and uneasiness. In addition to
these situations of discomfort, there was the fact of attending
from a distance, a fact which, as the social workers affirm, directly
affects the meaning of the profession and which, in the experience
of many of them, ends up causing strange situations, lack of
trust
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and dehumanization of the interventions. They state that a
bureaucratic relationship is imposed, seeing the user as a client
requesting a service and the social worker as a professional who
manages resources and numerical files.
“Right now, we have lost direct attention, I am not a social
worker, I am a social administrator” (Social worker from Madrid).
“The fact that now more attention is given by telephone is
reducing the social intervention as we understood it because, for
example, there are hardly any home visits and the possibility of
establishing a relationship of trust with the other person is lost”
(Social worker from Balearic Islands).
“Right now, there are situations of helping to people you have
never seen before, the call from someone who has never seen
your face before is a very managerial task and very strange
situations arise, the intervention is dehumanized, and I think we
must be careful because we can lose the sense of Social Work”
(Social worker from Madrid).
In addition, the social workers interviewed emphasized, on
the one hand, the constant situation of doubt and discomfort of
not knowing what was going to happen and, on the other hand,
the difficulty of being able to differentiate between professional
and personal space. This claim is more evident in a highly
feminized profession such as Social Work. Thus, the difficulty to
reconcile, the imposition of a third working day, the feeling of not
being able to disconnect from the responsibilities and demands
of users, etc. accompanied professionals during the first months
of the pandemic, completely blurring the difference between
professional and personal space. “The work has been really
hard and also with very little disconnection, being at home does
not mean disconnecting from all that intense work” (Social worker
from Aragon).
However, despite being generally dissatisfied with the loss of
face-to-face intervention from Social Work, there were also
professionals who in their speeches alluded to the benefits that
teleworking brought, because they understood that it streamlined
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the modernization of public administration in Spain and that without
a situation such as the one experienced, this would not have been
seen in the coming years. In this sense, in Social Services they
recover positive perspectives such as flexibility in bureaucratic
processes and care strategies (for example, accepting the sending
of documentation via WhatsApp); giving a faster telephone
response at least to offer a first orientation to the demands;
telematic meetings of professional teams (especially valuable in
territories with many small towns of high geographical dispersion)
or the possibility of coordinating with other organizations
telematically to, in effect, be able to realize the longed-for and
sometimes, utopian- inter-institutional coordination.
“We have moved the entire system to Teams. This is causing
a lot of effort, but in the end, they are process modifications. As
you learn how Teams works, it has many possibilities and I think
it will be positive” (Social worker from Madrid).
“We realized that for some users email was difficult and we
made it more flexible with WhatsApp by accepting documents,
and this is a way to make life easier for them too” (Social worker
from Andalusia).
“The more technological Social Work with good heads can
be good, for example, for team meetings or to meet with other
social organizations, we see each other online and we no longer
have to be hundreds of kilometers on the road” (Social worker
from Castile and Leon).
“For us, being in Social Services has been a challenge
and an opportunity”. Responses from Social Work to
emergency situations caused by the pandemic
Being a social worker in Social Services during the global
crisis caused by Covid19 has not been an easy position, nor a
desirable one. All the professionals interviewed from the very
beginning identified the first months of the confinement as the
hardest months of their working career, illustrating it with
situations that were impossible to believe. It is a verifiable fact
that the local Social Services centers were not prepared to
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respond to a situation such as the one experienced. From one
day to the next, many social workers had to take their folders full
of files, their agendas and, in some cases, their computers, and
start attending to requests from their homes. In other cases, they
had to continue going to the center in person, but to offer all
interventions telematically, except in cases of urgent need. In
addition to this novel situation, there was precisely what these
professionals have already mentioned, the fact of obeying
political decisions, which did not always correspond to the needs
of the system or of the professionals, once again highlighting the
evident gap between political and technical decisions.
“And no one has consulted us, because I could be working
from home, but they force me to be at the center, even though we
do not attend in person, but by telephone. Sometimes politicians
make decisions without consulting us and they are
counterproductive” (Social worker from Andalusia).
In addition to this evident fragmentation in the way of
understanding social intervention in Social Services, it should be
added that during the first months of the year, the demand for
assistance increased significantly, even tripling or quadrupling the
social needs of users in similar time periods in other years. This
increase in demand meant that in many centers, in the first months
of the year, the annual municipal budget allocated to social care
and protection was depleted, since practically all the demands
received in the first months of the pandemic were focused on
urgent economic needs (assistance for the payment of rents,
domestic supplies, basic food and hygiene products, etc.).
“The increase in demand has been brutal, with a very large
demand, we have spent almost the entire annual allocation of
social emergency (75%) in a few months. We have spent the
entire budget in 6 months” (Social worker from Madrid).
“I can’t spend as much time as I think I need to; I’m plugging
holes and putting out fires” (Social worker from Andalusia).
“I have never felt so overwhelmed with work. Now I open my
mail and find 80 pending emails” (Social worker from Aragon).
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As the months went by, the demand and pressure for care
stabilized, among other reasons because of the relaxation of the
health measures and because the considerable effort made by
the Spanish Ministry of Labor to cover workers who had lost their
jobs. An effort valued both in the national and international
context. Moreover, with the arrival of Autumn 2020, the
professionals experienced a sense of adaptation to the new
dynamics, thus being able to adapt to the new situation with a
peculiar hybrid return to normality (combining teleworking and
face-to-face). On the other hand, institutions were able to
articulate different social emergency benefits thanks to the
Covid19 Solidarity Fund of the European Union. In some of the
narratives analyzed, once the first six months had passed (from
March to August 2020), it is possible to note positive discourses
that also speak of a certain sense of satisfaction and pride in the
work developed, even going so far as to affirm that it has been an
opportunity for Social Work in that it has forced it to reorganize
and prioritize the meaning of its practice, innovating beyond the
imaginable.
“For me this period has been a challenge and an opportunity.
During the pandemic it became clear that we, the social workers
of Social Services, are here to attend to the difficulties, and I see
that this has helped us to assert ourselves and give meaning to
what we do” (Social worker from Aragon).
“After these months, I feel enthusiastic, satisfied and proud
of my team. Tired because of the dedication in hours, but eager
to go to work and continue intervening” (Social worker from
Andalusia).
DISCUSSION
The research has made it possible to understand the effects
of a global pandemic context on the organizational dynamics of
Social Services. On the one hand, and throughout the text, issues
related to organizational changes have been exposed, especially
the implications of the telematic irruption in the field of social
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intervention. On the other hand, it has been studied how the
changes have been lived and experienced at a relational level in
the day to day of the professional teams. It can be affirmed that
the pandemic has demonstrated Social Work’s capacity for
immediate response to novel and ever-changing situations. The
results show that the role of social workers during the almost two
years of the pandemic has verified the fundamental contribution
they make to the social order as facilitators of social cohesion,
and on some occasions, they also act as retaining walls for the
uneasiness of citizens. Covid19 has posed a global challenge for
organizations dedicated to social intervention, leading to an
unprecedented increase in their workload. The work overload
and the working conditions faced by Social Work, at a time of
strong de-professionalization of social intervention in Spain,
require a collective struggle beyond the individual and immediate
needs of each professional to try to establish stable workforces
with decent working hours, salaries, and work-life balance. The
pandemic has also made evident the emotional discomfort faced
by Social Services professionals, as there are many speeches in
which they refer to and explain situations of exhaustion and
stress sustained for months under the premise of not leaving
without attention to the users, even causing somatization
disorders and emotional discomfort to the point of turning them
into physical discomfort.
One of the most significant innovations in an eminently face-
to-face work context has been the irruption of the telematic world,
the arrival of the online to the direct accompaniment of people.
The complementarities of new technologies with analogical uses
pose a challenge for society as a whole, but specifically for Social
Services, because although the speeches analyzed identify
possibilities for improving and streamlining procedures, especially
administrative ones, and many of the Social Work professionals
identify the possibilities of improvement that the telematic allows
them in terms of the expansion of a Social Services model more
adapted to future needs, the inclusion of the digital world in social
intervention cannot and should not be done in an uncritical way,
it requires a deep reflection on the effects of this technologization
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Virginia Paéz-Izquierdo, Mercedes Muriel-Saiz
in social assistance. According to King et al. (2021), social
workers are challenged to learn about technological tools to put
them at the service of promoting social justice and achieving well-
being, always examining what new and emerging interventions
can benefit individuals and communities, without denigrating or
forgetting traditional modes of intervention that have
demonstrated potentially positive results for certain groups.
In conclusion, Social Work in Social Services after a global
context of pandemic has many and varied challenges ahead for
the coming years. There are many Spanish territories and regions
that are thinking and debating on the models of social intervention
to
be followed from the Social Services. Perhaps it is too soon since
we are still during the pandemic to affirm issues that can be
modified, but throughout this text we have tried to identify those
issues that clearly do not work, as well as aspects that have made
possible an improvement in the day-to-day professional
practice.
All these proposals for improvement and these changes,
based on
the analysis of the speeches of the professional protagonists,
bring to the table the need for changes in the organization of
Social Services, modifications in working conditions, as well as
new ways of relating to users and responding to the increase in
demands. In short, reflections on the procedures, resources, and
ways of being in Social Services, unavoidable issues for the
conception of these as a key system of welfare and social
cohesion. Ultimately, the study has made it possible to reflect on
the procedures, resources and ways of being in Social Services,
unavoidable issues both in the new legislative texts on the subject
that are being developed at the state and autonomous community
level, as well as issues to be considered for reflection and new
models of Social Services, developing them as a key system of
welfare and social cohesion.
DECLARATIONS
DATA AND MATERIAL AVAILABILITY
This article is part of a national research, you can find all the
data and research materials on the following website:
Acciones e investigaciones Sociales. ISSN: 1132-192X. n.º 43 (2022). Páginas 235 a 258
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Being a Social Worker in Social Services during the Covid-19 Pandemic
255
https://www.ucm.es/monitorss.
DECLARATION OF INTEREST STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
FUNDING
We are grateful to the National Institute of
Public Administration (INAP) for funding the research
project "The Impact of Covid19 on Social Services". This
work was also supported by the Ministry of Universities
(aid for university teaching training FPU19/03510).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank all social workers who took the time
to participate in the interviews. We also thank our
fellow researchers for their work and generosity.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Virginia Páez Izquierdo: Degree in Translation and
Interpreting. PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Social Work,
Complutense University of Madrid. Researcher at Department of
Sociology: Methodology and Theory (Faculty of Sociology and
Political Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid).
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Virginia-Paez-Izquierdo
Mercedes Muriel Saiz: Degree in Journalism, Social Work
and Master in Community Social Work, Management and
Evaluation of Social Services. PhD Candidate by Ministry of
Universities of Spain at the Department of Social Work and Social
Services (Faculty of Social Work, Complutense University of
Madrid). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mercedes-Tuca-
Muriel-Saiz
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