We need to prevent burnout in social care - here's what we are trying in Scarborough: Mark Minton

That means it floats a tricky ground and can often be missed.

The levels of burnout in the NHS are documented and analysed in its annual Staff Survey, but The King’s Fund has highlighted that comparable data is not available for adult social care workers.

I work for Happy Futures in Scarborough, which supports individuals living with learning disabilities, mental health, and complex care needs, and my role is to help our employees, mostly carers, with their health and wellbeing.

My role is new and a forward-thinking, pragmatic move by the organisation because we know that if burnout is left unattended, it can lead to long-term physical and mental health consequences for an individual and, therefore, ultimately impact the organisation.

The Kinds Fund cites burnout as occurring when the demands on us exceed the resources that we have.

So this could be our own personal resources, such as lack of skills, lack of training, lack of equipment, or the resources in our teams or organisations, such as staff shortages, lack of PPE equipment or inadequate technologies.

So, one of the ways to support our employees in social care is by using the tools available to healthcare organisations.

We use the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which was developed for the self-assessment of the risk of burnout.

This is a readily available tool to assess the symptoms of the syndrome, thus giving insight into the mental health struggles of an employee.

The questionnaire can be completed in 10 minutes and can be done by the carer.

It isn’t a diagnosis but a starting point and helpful to make people aware of their risk for burnout.

From any findings, where appropriate, we can advise rest, relaxation and stress-reducing ideas for our employees.

We may signpost to other support.

We always try to be flexible if our team are struggling and make reasonable adjustments where possible.

The reality of working in social care means that we, of course, can’t avoid every trigger.

Some of our individuals require intense support, and the situations our team are in may be volatile.

So, instead, we look at ways to support and prevent burnout in the first place.

My role, having been created in the first place, demonstrates that we are not just paying lip service to this very real issue, but, as an organisation, take it seriously.

Understanding the scale of the problem of burnout in social care and tackling it is fundamental to attracting and retaining a skilled team, which is a huge issue for our industry.

Keeping our team physically and mentally well means they stay well and ultimately can provide the best care to those who depend on them.

Mark Minton is Health & Wellbeing Lead for the Yorkshire Care Group