TIME FOR A MENTAL HEALTH MONTH

Sick leave crisis hits social services (Katherine Demopoulos, The Guardian, April 15th, 2005)

Some 20,000 local authority social services staff were signed off sick for two months or more last year, according to a new survey of English councils.

The figure, which represents around 9% of the total number of staff in social services departments, highlights the crisis plaguing these departments, many of which struggle to find employees to fill posts.

Staff complain of large workloads and high stress levels, which public sector Unison said were major causes of sickness absence. [...]

Additionally, the figures reveal that social services staff take significantly more sick leave than other areas of both the public and private sectors.

Government statistics published last November showed that civil servants took an average two weeks' sick leave a year, costing £368m. This is roughly double that of the private sector, according to Richard Dodd, spokesman for the Confederation of British Industry.

Larger organisations tend to have worse absence levels, he said, which is one reason why local authorities are hit hard. He said one crucial element in reducing absenteeism seems to be "having senior management involvement in managing absence. So this is better in a small organisation."

There are several laws at work here, all combining to make government social work the ultimate morale and spirit crusher. The first is that many unsupervised employees with generous sick and disability benefits will use them in complete (and defiant) good faith and with the general assistance of the medical profession. The second is that anyone who sets out on a career to “help people” had better be prepared for a lot of abuse and disappointment. The third is that morale problems increase proportionately as the number of employees in any organization grows beyond seven.