Hate crime casework and support offers help, assistance and advice to people who have been the victims of hate violence, repeat victimisation and, in some cases, secondary victimisation. A hate crime service is often accessed at crisis points where the coping mechanisms of the individual can no longer manage or process what they are suffering. In entering a helping service, the client is seeking support, reassurance and solutions, often from a caseworker. While the role of the caseworker is to provide support and show empathy and compassion, there are impacts on them that also need to be identified and responded to.

The helping professions can be very effective and rewarding forms of practice (Thompson, 2011b). In my work with hate crime professionals, they identified strongly with a commitment to social justice and working for the client that is often viewed as changing not only the lives of individuals and families, but also communities, agencies, institutions, and society. Helping professionals are driven by a belief in their capacity to make a difference; for a client to be helped through an ethos of genuineness and caring; and these beliefs and approaches will sustain them in working with clients with enduring difficulties (Koprowska, 2014).

I have met caseworkers who, while doing their job, are suffering from depression, are close to burnout, are feeling unsupported and isolated, are managing an increasingly large caseload and complex political relationships with other agencies, and are working on fixedterm contracts in projects with time-limited funding. Hate crime practitioners also have needs that must be recognised and responded to by the services that employ them.

Burnout and vicarious trauma

Working with the emotional and practical demands of victims of hate crime, in a pressurised political environment and with increasing workloads and expectations, can lead to burnout. Burnout is a ‘state where people can no longer connect authentically to their work, to themselves or to service users’ (Koprowska, 2014: 199). It has three aspects:

• • emotional exhaustion;

• • depersonalisation; and

• • loss of personal accomplishment (Maslach et al, 1996, cited in Koprowska, 2014: 199).

Burnout can reduce a caseworker's ability to empathise, concentrate and provide an appropriate and professional response, and result in loss of satisfaction or depression. Indeed, a hate crime service that I worked with recognised burnout as a direct and inevitable consequence of the job role.