Monday, 7.40 a.m.

This scene is invented but typical. It draws on things many unit managers in Swedish social services will recognise, and is not based on any real person, team or event.

The morning#

It is 7.40 when Sara pulls into the car park behind the council offices. She hasn't switched off the engine when her phone buzzes. Two texts. One social worker has a fever, the other has a sick child. Both had home visits booked before lunch.

She sits for a moment with her hands on the wheel. Then she opens her calendar. At ten she has a budget meeting with senior management. At one she has a one-to-one with Mikael, who has asked to talk about his workload. That meeting has already been postponed once.

On the stairs she meets Lina, one of the experienced social workers. Lina has a case file under her arm and looks as if she slept badly.

"Have you got five minutes? It's the family I mentioned on Friday. The school called this morning. I need your decision on an emergency placement before nine."

Sara says yes before she has taken her coat off.

They sit down in Sara's office. Lina tells her what the school has seen and what she already knows about the family. Sara asks questions. What does the child say? Is there anyone in the wider family? What would happen if they waited until the afternoon? After twenty minutes they have a decision, and a plan for who does what.

It is 8.25. A new member of staff is standing in the corridor looking lost. She wonders whether she is supposed to take one of the home visits now that her colleague is off sick, and whether anyone can come with her. Sara doesn't know. She says so, and promises an answer before half past nine.

Back in her office she takes out a sheet of paper and writes three lines. The home visits: who can cover them, which can move. The budget meeting: the one thing she has to say. Mikael: the meeting happens, whatever else does.

At 8.50 she calls the manager of the neighbouring team and asks to borrow a social worker for one of the visits. That works. She moves the other visit to Thursday, after phoning the family herself.

At 9.20 she knocks on the new colleague's door.

"You'll go with Ahmed on his visit on Thursday, and we'll prepare it together on Wednesday. Today you stay here."

At 9.55 she walks to the budget meeting with one sentence on a slip of paper in her pocket. She hasn't had breakfast.

What I see in Sara's morning#

I think many unit managers would recognise every minute of this morning. I do. This is what it looks like when a small team is responsible for children's safety, and the staff are people who get ill.

Researchers who interviewed ten Swedish first-line managers in private psychiatric and addiction care describe exactly that picture: high and contradictory demands, both a lot and very little control over the work, and acute crises to handle in the middle of everything else. The study is small and comes from another sector, but I think the picture holds for social services too.

There are three things in Sara's morning I want to point out.

She says "I don't know" to the new colleague and gives a time when she will know. It costs her one sentence. The colleague knows when she will get an answer, and Sara doesn't have to invent one she would later have to take back.

She writes it down. Three lines on paper, and the ten o'clock meeting shrinks to one sentence. Under pressure, thoughts get fast and jumpy, and on paper they can be taken one at a time.

She holds on to the meeting with Mikael. It is the meeting most easily dropped on a day like this, because nobody phones to demand it. It may still be the most important decision she makes all day. Someone who has asked to talk about their workload, and is pushed aside twice, will draw their own conclusions.

And then the evening#

What I wonder about most is what happens to Sara when she gets home. A morning like that tends to follow you home and well into the night.

There is a reason to take that seriously. A review of the research on recovery describes how a heavy workload goes with difficulty letting go of work in your free time, and how that in turn goes with more strain and poorer well-being, burnout among them.

For Sara it could be something very small. On the drive home she could call her own manager or a fellow manager and tell them how the morning went, leaving out any details about the family, so that she isn't carrying it alone. The day is still there, but she gets a chance to put it down for a while.

What stays with me is how many mornings like this a manager has in a year, and how rarely anyone sees them.