Girona hosted a conference focused on the emotional well-being of professionals who care for vulnerable people, with a shared message from social entities and public health officials: psychological support exists in many cases, but it still depends excessively on internal resources and the initiative of each organization.
The paradox affecting the sector soon emerged in the debate. Those who provide direct care to groups in complex situations demand that their own well-being cease to be an accessory issue, even though indicators of distress and burnout have been worsening for years.
The mental health of social workers worsened after the pandemic
Coral Fernández, manager of Galatea, focused on the impact of daily work on the mental health of these professionals. She explained that most of the distress detected in the sector is linked to the work environment, overload, shifts, relational problems, and lack of resources.
The data presented at the conference shows this deterioration. The percentage of social workers who considered their mental health to be fair or poor rose from 12% before the pandemic to 27% in July 2020 and 34% in the autumn of 2021.
Added to this is the accumulated daily wear and tear. Between 45% and 70% of social workers present moderate or high levels of burnout, while 57% report high emotional exhaustion, 62% depersonalization attitudes, and 20% feelings of low personal accomplishment.
Fernández added that Galatea assisted 5,300 professionals before the pandemic and 19,500 in the five years that followed. In these records, nurses and social workers account for more cases of negative self-perception than other profiles, ahead of doctors, pharmacists, and veterinarians.
Entities already offer internal support, but ask for it to stop depending on each organization
Non-governmental organizations already provide some of this psychotherapeutic support internally. They do so with specific sessions or with units created specifically to care for their staff, and Suara has the online platform Benestarum for the emotional well-being of its workers.
Marina Valladares, from the SERGI foundation, argued that this support should be guaranteed in a stable manner for all direct care providers.
"All people who work with people should have free therapy" - Marina Valladares, SERGI foundation
Valladares maintained that the challenge lies in structuring this psychological support so that it does not depend on goodwill and is definitively established. He also stressed that trust is key and that the objective is to generate safe environments where it can occur in reality.
Helena Rodríguez, on behalf of Suara, agreed on the need for education because, in her opinion, the situation is not exceptional and is reproduced in different areas. The shared claim in Girona aimed to make emotional care an ordinary condition of work and not a one-off response.
DipSalut proposes multi-year contracts to provide stability to staff
Silvia Oliveras, representative of DipSalut, linked the well-being of the teams with the labor stability of the entities that provide these services. Her proposal involved contracting multi-year with these organizations to give more continuity to projects and staff.
Oliveras emphasized that it is not easy to bring in an outsider to work with the wounds and accumulated burdens of users and the teams themselves. She added that entities are learning to resolve conflicts in a different way and that this change requires time.
Fernández, for his part, admitted that the public funding that Galatea receives remains insufficient. Although he acknowledged greater institutional sensitivity, he concluded his intervention with a concrete fact: the full integration of this dimension into the system is still a long way off.