Last updated: 15 January 2025
What is burnout?
Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. It can occur when you experience long-term stress in your job, or when you have worked in a physically or emotionally draining role for a long time.
Key symptoms of burnout:
- Fatigue and insomnia
- Frustration and anger
- Feeling helpless, trapped and/or deflated
- Diminished feelings of personal accomplishment
- Self-doubt
- Depersonalisation (feeling detached/alone)
- Procrastination and taking longer to do things
- Having a cynical/negative outlook
- Feeling overwhelmed
What is primary trauma?
Primary trauma refers to the direct experience of a traumatic event that causes significant emotional, psychological, or physical distress. This trauma occurs when an individual is personally involved in, or exposed to a situation that threatens their safety, wellbeing, or life. Examples of events that could occur in homelessness service settings that may lead to primary trauma include the death of a service user, being assaulted, and supporting someone who has self-harmed or attempted suicide. Severe and prolonged trauma can result in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
What is vicarious trauma?
Vicarious trauma refers to the emotional and psychological impact experienced by individuals who are exposed to the trauma of others, often through their work or close relationships.
Key symptoms of vicarious trauma:
- A change in world view and in beliefs about self, others, and the world
- Nightmares, flashbacks and/or intrusive thoughts
- Hypervigilance and difficulty concentrating
- Difficulties in relaxing and falling asleep
In addition, symptoms attributed to burnout could also be an indication that someone is experiencing vicarious trauma.
Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) is a set of observable reactions to working with people who have been traumatised and mirrors the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). STS can occur after an individual has heard someone’s experience of trauma even just one time, whereas vicarious trauma is a shift which happens in an individual after frequent exposure.
What is compassion fatigue?
Compassion fatigue arises from the emotional strain of empathetically engaging with people who are experiencing significant trauma, hardship or distress and the challenge of balancing this with administrative work.
Key symptoms of compassion fatigue:
- Empathy depletion – feeling emotionally drained, making it difficult to connect deeply with clients
- Cynicism
- Increased anxiety and stress
- Difficulty concentrating and decreased productivity
- Negative thought patterns
- Exhaustion
What is moral injury?
Moral injury occurs when a person feels they have violated their moral or ethical beliefs or values, or when they are forced to witness or participate in acts that conflict with their sense of right and wrong. People working in the homelessness sector can experience moral injury, particularly when their work exposes them to ethical dilemmas or situations, where their ability to help is constrained.
Examples of moral injury for workers in the homelessness sector:
- Systemic barriers: Worker may face bureaucratic, legal, or systemic limitations, such as lack of funding, restrictive policies, or insufficient housing options, that prevent them from providing the care or support they feel is morally required.
- Ethical dilemmas: They might encounter situations where they must make impossible choices, like prioritising one individual's needs over another's due to limited resources or having to send someone away to rough sleep.
- Witnessing injustice: Seeing the effects of poverty, trauma, and systemic inequality can leave workers feeling powerless or complicit in an unjust system.
- Repeated trauma exposure: Frequent experiences of hearing or witnessing the trauma of those experiencing homelessness can deeply affect a worker's sense of morality and purpose.
- Lack of support: When organisations fail to provide adequate emotional or professional support, workers may feel abandoned, which compounds feelings of moral injury.
Key symptoms of moral injury
- Feelings of guilt, shame, or anger
- Emotional exhaustion
- Loss of faith
- A sense of betrayal or disillusionment with systems or institutions
- Withdrawal from work or relationships due to cynicism or despair
How can staff look after themselves?
- Practice self-awareness and refection – always consider your reactions/responses to situations and recognise the signs/symptoms you may be experiencing.
- Practice mindfulness – listen to Series 2, Episode 2 of our Going Beyond podcast which discusses the importance of mindfulness and goes through some simple grounding exercises to reduce stress.
- Develop compassion for yourself and others – be kind to yourself when things are tough at work or at home; avoid placing any blame on yourself.
- Practice self-care activities – for example, prioritise rest and ensure you are getting enough sleep, adopt heathy eating habits.
- Set firm boundaries around work and home Iife – ensure you have a good work-life balance to avoid burnout.
- Connect with others – speak with colleagues and friends about anything you might be struggling with– chances are, they may be experiencing similar emotions.
- Speak openly with your manager – during supervision, but also in more informal settings.
- Link in with other health/support services where necessary – for example, counselling/therapy or wellbeing groups.
How should staff be supported?
Reflective practice
Reflective practice describes an individual or team taking time to think about their role/practice, including what is going well, what is difficult, how they are feeling, and how they make others feel. Embedding reflective practice into homelessness organisations is essential to enable individuals to take a step back from their work and make sense of their experiences and responses in the workplace. This can enable staff to be less reactive and have more thoughtful and responsive interactions with others.
Read our guidance on reflective practice within homelessness organisations.
Supervisions
Managers should ensure that they are having regular supervision/1:1 meetings with staff members, dedicating sufficient space for reflection and a wellbeing check-in. Providing space for individuals to acknowledge that things can be difficult can alleviate that person’s pain and give them more ability to cope. It is important that supervision should not only be about performance or absence management, but also a supportive space where staff can talk through how they are feeling at work and any factors outside of work that may be impacting them.
Read our guidance on conducting psychologically informed supervisions.
Debriefing
Debriefing is a process which can be adopted by teams to help them cope with stressful situations and challenging incidents at work. Debriefing is essential to allowing staff to unpack a situation, reflect on what happened, and learn from the experience.
Listen to Series 2 of our ‘Going Beyond’ podcast which focusses on the impact of the working in the homelessness sector on staff wellbeing – Episode 5 is about debriefing and Episode 6 is on reflective practice.
Transforming organisational culture
Transforming organisational culture within homelessness services requires a strong commitment from leaders and managers. Embedding psychologically/trauma-informed frameworks throughout the organisation can be hugely beneficial to mitigating some of the issues outlined above.
Leaders should role-model essential behaviours, such as vulnerability and prioritising self-care and create safe and supportive environments where their managers and staff feel empowered to discuss, and have space to manage, their emotional experience. Leaders and managers are not immune to work-placed stressors and should ensure that there is space to reflect on, and process, their own experiences too.
Use our practice development tool for being trauma-informed which includes reflective questions for managers and leaders to consider when reviewing service delivery and organisational culture