Is being a DSL a good idea?

I think that DSL's are great. But is it great being a DSL? This week I'm looking at the pros and cons of being Designated to Lead on all the Safeguarding...

“When someone is having a bad day at work you can always commiserate. But when one of your colleagues is having a good day? Well, that's just awkward."

Let's say you’ve been a DSL for ten years (if you’ve been going for longer, you might want to look away now). By my rough maths ten years as a DSL would equate to over 15,000 hours of being designated to lead on safeguarding. 15,000 hours! Yikes. If we're going to spend that much time doing this thing, I guess I feel like it might be worth spending just a little bit of time reflecting on whether that's a good idea or not...

"Do you enjoy your job?" It's an innocent enough question. And it seems like a simple but very important one. But for a DSL it sounds more like a trick question. You can't really say “Yes” can you? (Just how much do you enjoy working with other people's sadness and suffering?). But you can't really say '“No” either can you? (What, you mean even the safeguarding lead doesn't want to do the safeguarding!). So 'enjoy' certainly doesn't feel like the right word somehow.

I've talked to DSL's with varying degrees of job satisfaction, and have experienced my own peaks and troughs with it. At my best I could honestly say that I've felt like I've got a really really great job (even if I still might shy away from the word 'enjoyable'). At my lowest points, it’s felt like a very hard and foolish way to pay the mortgage. And given all of the stresses and flak it comes with, it's actually worth asking why on earth anyone would think it's the right job for them, probably yourself included. I mean seriously, why are you a DSL?

It's probably not the money.

Jokes aside, that's actually worth remembering. The ratio of responsibility to financial recompense for being a DSL certainly doesn't look like good business. And research shows that the number one predictor of someone’s job satisfaction is – you guessed it – their salary. However, the research also suggests that we still tend to overestimate how much the size of someone's pay-packet determines how happy they are in their work. Interestingly, I find how being a DSL makes my own financial situation seem can also cut both ways. Working with children and families that live in genuine poverty can make me feel incredibly grateful for the comfortable life and security that I’ve got. But this gratitude can then stray over into guilt. And whilst you might appreciate your situation when you compare yourself to some of the families that you work with, you can probably just as easily feel hard-done-by if you compare yourself to people that work in other jobs. Most of us will know people that get paid much more than us, for jobs that don’t seem to demand anything like as much psychological and emotional effort as being a DSL does. I can honestly say that I've got friends who earn twice as much as me, who seem to spend most of their day at ‘work’ sending me funny things that they've found on the internet. (Annoyingly I then have to watch all of these things when I get home, because being a DSL I can't just not watch them in case I miss something important!).

So putting aside the money, what makes any job worthwhile? In his 2008 book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggested that there are three features of satisfying labour: complexity, autonomy and a direct link between your input and your reward. Let’s break those down one at a time.

Complexity

Well you've probably got the complexity element covered. In all of my conversations with DSL's, I've never heard anyone say "I just wish my work was more complicated!". I would guess that the complexity is actually one of the key features of the work that drew you in. People in general are endlessly complex. And the people that you work with in safeguarding can be more complex than most. If you've chosen to be a DSL then you probably find that kind of a challenge interesting, and possibly even 'enjoy' it.

My guess is that you still have a 'simpler life' fantasy though. In mine I'm a groundskeeper at some big country mansion, owned by a friendly and grateful old couple from the upper crust. I go up and down on a ride-on mower, with my earphones on in the warm sunshine. The biggest issue I have to deal with is deciding when to take my lunch break. The grass always looks great when I've finished. And at the end of my shift, by the time I'm out of the long driveway to their mansion, I've already forgotten about work, and my brain is my own until the next day starts.

Bet this guy isn’t stressing about Ofsted… (Photograph by Vaan Photography on Pexels).

But the truth is I reckon I'd be bored on that mower before my first pay-cheque landed. And I hate being bored. So I'm chalking complexity up as a good feature of life as a DSL. It's the complexity that means I never, ever clock-watch, except when I look at the clock and think "Argh, I've only got two hours left at work!"

Autonomy

Next up then: autonomy. Here the picture is probably a bit more mixed, but most DSL's I speak to are afforded a reasonable degree of independence, freedom and control in their work. To be honest, it's probably not a role you give to someone you have no faith in. You probably want your DSL to be able to use their initiative and work well independently. Compared to other jobs I've done, I am very much left to my own devices. And most of us generally like to be left to our own devices. We obviously still reserve the right to moan about being left to our own devices when it suits us. And - and no matter how hypocritical it is - we will then complain even louder if anyone else actually tries to get their hands on the device! In my experience most DSL's want - and usually have - a decent amount of autonomy, which suits the fact that we are usually control freaks diligent and motivated people.

So complexity? We’ve got more than enough thanks. Autonomy? Pretty good there too. And the final part of the jigsaw: a strong link between your own efforts and your rewards? Erm, Houston....

A strong link between your input and your reward

Let's be honest, for DSL’s it can be very very hard to see that what you are doing is making a difference sometimes. When the main thing that you're trying to do is help to improve the lives of vulnerable children, the relationship between your own efforts and their outcomes can feel tenuous, or even non-existent. If you let it, the job can quickly turn optimists into realists, and then realists into defeatists. That presents a challenge, psychologically, for all of us.

When considering your work with specific families, I call this the 'supermarket queue' problem. Whenever you choose a queue in the supermarket, if you want to, you can then watch the queue that you didn't choose to see how things would have turned out had you acted differently. You can get that little hit of satisfaction if you see that you made the right choice. But there is no equivalent in the DSL role. You don't get to see the alternative reality from the sliding doors moment. 99% of the time there isn’t a Hollywood ending where everything gets fixed and everyone lives happily ever after. Instead, your best hope is just to make things a little bit better (or at least to stop them getting worse). And you don’t get to see what would have happened if you hadn’t been there trying to do that: if you didn't take the time to ask that kid how she was feeling, or phone that social worker and try and persuade them that they need to be more involved. In fact, quite unfairly, the only time you get to see what would happen if you weren’t there is when you miss something - or at least it misses you - and so you’re not there and the bad thing actually happens. So that's a lot of positive reinforcement we have to do without. Imagine how powerful it would be if you could see all of those parallel universes: to see where just one of those kids would be without you doing all those things that you've done. That would keep you going on those tough days wouldn't it.

And even when you do manage to make an impact, it can still feel weird to take credit for your work as a DSL. I have a thank you card on my locker at work, from a girl I worked with a few years back. I like that card and I don’t mind feeling a bit proud of it. Most of the time I feel like I was ‘just doing my job’ but in that instance I did sort of choose to get involved in a situation it would have been easier to stay out of, and I know I made a difference. But even then I still don’t want to take any of the credit away from her. And I also have to accept the reality that around the same time I could have got a letter from a different child, asking me why I didn't help them more. And that’s a hard thing to get my head around.

And to be honest, I don't even know how I would define success in my role? When my work is so complex, how can I ever measure or assess my effectiveness? A child gets taken into care? Have I made a difference by ensuring that we monitored, recorded and shared our concerns which helped provide necessary evidence in court? Or does that outcome just demonstrate that we failed at early intervention, which is why it ended up there? It really is hard to keep score on yourself as a DSL.

And then there's the mind boggling reality that there are loads of kids in my school who I'm currently not supporting as well as I want to: either because I just haven’t got enough time, or because I don't even know about the things that they're going through yet. I know that this is true, but I still find it hard to really accept. So many people, so many problems: you can feel less like you're making a difference, more like you're just a glorified irrelevance. When you have to live with these harsh realities on a daily basis, it’s not hard to spiral into stress or despair.

So what sort of lemonade can we make out of these lemons then?

I've come to the conclusion that how good a DSL you are really does matter, and it really will make a difference. But at the same time, I try to accept that I won't always be able to see a link between my efforts, and the outcomes for our pupils. On bad days all of your hard work might feel futile, or even farcical. But over those 15,000 hours, the cumulative effect of you doing your job well rather than not well is going to be absolutely massive. A legacy that you might not be able to see or measure, but is still out there all the same, in the lives of real people. That's the thought I try and carry with me anyway.

For a final thought, what I can and will say is this: whatever you do, don't do the negative equivalent of having your cake and eating it. (Whatever that is? Having your lentils and eating them maybe?). What I mean is, be consistent in how you view the link between your efforts and the outcomes. If you think that what you do makes a big difference, then remember this whenever anything goes at all well, and make sure that you give yourself credit when good things happen. Or if you’re not going to do that - and you’re going to dismiss your role in things going well - then don't be too quick to blame yourself when things go wrong either. Do both, or do neither. Basically, don’t go around hoovering up mistakes and failures, whilst disregarding your part in any positives or successes. Because - as any kid would tell you - that's just not fair. And fair treatment is the least all of us deserve.

Next time I’ll be back with my second ‘Useful Bits and Interesting Bobs’ piece, looking at another resource you can use to get kids talking about emotions (check the first one out here). Until then, be kind to yourself, and if you haven’t already then please subscribe below. And if you’re already on it with that then why not share with any other DSL’s you know - I really appreciate anyone helping to spread the word.