The Untold Truth About Social Work

After spending over half my life working with children/families and half of that working as a case manager, it astounds me everyday to see the limitless criticism, stress, humiliation, and judgment that is dumped on social workers not to mention the endless ways in which they are taken advantage of, taken for granted, and under appreciated for the work they do. It absolutely would not be an understatement to say as far as social work goes, we are "rock bottom" when it comes to desired professions based upon pay and perks. We are viewed as low status and low class. Plumbers have the potential to make far more money than us and they are dealing with literal sh*t all day not figurative. So you sort of have to ask yourself, if it's so stressful, so demeaning, and so underpaid, why would anyone intentionally pay money to earn a degree that would allow them to work in this field. I wonder? There is this thing called "inner desire to create change." That is not to say that as with ANY PROFESSION, improvements can be made. The problem we face day in and day out is that insane level of societal contempt and blame that is routinely projected at us because we are used as the receptacle for all the pain and guilt society feels when children are not kept safe and/or are not succeeding as opposed to putting the blame where the blame goes. Let's put it this way, if social work were a child, it would have already been removed from the "professional world" for it's own safety.

Probably the biggest injustice we face is the systematic refusal of the general public to acknowledge in anyway all the good that social workers do day after day in often bewilderingly, dangerous, extremely complex cases. The public possesses a massive ignorance that social workers sit in an office all day doing nothing but paperwork or my personal favorite, playing computer games. Have you ever watched hoarders? Do you know how many social workers routinely walk into situations like that every day to check on the welfare of children or the elderly because they have cases living in those conditions? It's not just on TV folks and guess what, they don't get hazmat suits and respirators! Now lets talk about the violence they are subjected to and I don't just mean getting their feelings hurt by a little profanity and verbal aggression from a pissed off parent. In 2010, a 26 year old social worker was stabbed multiple times in her face, neck, abdomen, and back of the head during a home visit. She remained in critical condition until undergoing necessary surgery to save her life. She lived, but is now permanently scarred and disabled for life. In 2009 a social worker was beat to death with a hammer by a father when she came to remove a child that was being sexually abused in the home. In 2004, a father attacked a social worker with a knife and a CHAINSAW! In the past few years alone in the U.S. we have witnessed the fatal stabbings of several clinical social workers, a social worker who was beat to death, one who was sexually assaulted and murdered, and one who was shot in a mental health facility. These are only a few of the murders  and this list does not include the NUMEROUS assaults and threats of violence social workers are faced with everyday. Violence against social workers has become an inherent risk of the profession and undeniably one that needs to be addressed on a national scope. Social workers are frequently sent ALONE and UNARMED to dangerous situations in neighborhoods that even police officers are not required to enter without a partner and a gun. We expect our social workers to perform life changing interventions daily, but what measures are being taken to ensure their safety? A national study was conducted of 10,000 licensed social workers in which 44% revealed they had been confronted with personal safety issues on the job.

Another misconception is that social work only requires academic abilities. Wrong! It is just as much about academic ability as it is about emotional literacy, life experience, personal values, and societal resilience. These qualities are desperately needed so the social worker can relate to the disadvantaged, suffering, at risk people they are typically working with. It is highly patronizing for an individual to tell another "I understand what you are going through" or "I completely see where you are coming from" when you couldn't possibly have the faintest idea what this person is struggling with and in most situations, this type of approach only increases the hostility. I am fortunate enough to have very similar life experiences to some of my parents and/or kids I work with and those experiences allow me to give them a window into what life could be when they apply themselves.

While it is true my degrees are not specifically in social work, I have been working within the social work field for nearly ten years. I have spent twenty years working with children and families, working directly with other individuals who work within the CPS and APS system, and the juvenile/adult justice system. I have also been going to college since 1994 (yes I said that out loud..lol) having received insane amounts of education on psychology, child psychology, social work, education, education psychology, administration, and adult/juvenile criminal justice and I could not even begin to estimate the amount of training I have received on dealing with specific situations or the number of trainings I have attended childhood behavior and child development. So personally I feel I am a pretty intelligent when it comes to the world of academics, general knowledge, and the world of living (some may not agree and that's okay). What I have seen in all that experience is people who are inspirational...people who are passionate...people who are driven...people who put others before themselves...people who give up time with their own families for the sake of time with others...people who care about the world we are leaving behind...people who see good where no one else does...people who give love to those who refuse it...people who are able to tell others "you have greatness" when society only tells them otherwise...people who know the preconceived negative notion the world has about them and push through anyway...This is evident in their drive to work all hours, their skills at helping children and families reveal the harm they are experiencing, and their compassionate and authoritative approach to vulnerable, fearful and angry parents. And through all of this we are not afforded a uniform or a cape! (although, there is still a running joke at my job in regards to a comment I made years ago about us deserving a super hero cape)

Some people might also say that working in an "out of home" placement facility makes myself and others like me immune to what the "typical" social worker has to face. Okay, fair enough, lets look at that shall we! The caseworkers in the facility where I work have a caseload just like any other caseworker, I have 12. The paperwork aspect would be hard to even wrap your brain around, but we will do a brief summary. We call the parents and arrange our own assessment dates for candidates, conduct the 7 hour assessment (the assessment questionnaire is 17 pages) before placement, present the information to the assessment committee, conduct the activities upon admit, write the psychosocial upon placement (10-15 pages), 72 plan of service (4-6 pages), 30 day plan of service (10-15 pages), and plan of service every 90 days after that (7-12 pages), team meeting notes for each child every two weeks, all contact with parents on every child documented, filling out verification forms for doctor's appointments on each child, completing report card letters, completion of plan of service letters, notification of plan of service review letters, discharge summaries upon release, and I am sure there is more I am not including. Mailing out all of the above, plus report cards, sports schedules, school calendars, visit letters. Filing all of the above plus all documentation sent from the clinic and most from the school. Attending all school meetings, teacher meetings, clinic appointments, psychiatric appointments, all the while making sure their MC is aware of everything that is going on. Maintaining charts for all of the children on your caseload and some of them have up to five charts. Writing incidents reports for negative behaviors, acts against policy or licensing, medication errors/refusals, and there is about 10 other things we write them for. Making CPS reports and completing the paperwork for that. Not to mention fitting into our schedule all the trainings and meetings every week required by our job. While doing all of that (and I can promise you I have not covered everything in anyway), we also need to have a relationship with our children so we also need to find time in our day to go to our homes and visit with our kids, attend their school functions, or sporting events (keep in mind we are doing that for 12 kids and a lot of parents have trouble finding the time to do that for their own 2 or 3 children). Our facility also provides buses that go to Dallas and Houston for the summer and Christmas breaks and caseworkers are responsible for staffing those. Yes that means 8-10 hours on a bus filled with children. We have a summer program since we are a year round program that caseworkers and house parents staff and help supervise so we work five days, all day each summer in that program. We also work rodeo, our Christmas program, and all other major functions put on at our facility. Having a facility of nearly 300 kids, during he major holidays and long weekends, we obviously have a lot that fly in and out. Guess who does a great deal of driving back and forth to the airport, keeping in mind we are an hour away from the airport. That doesn't include the regular driving of kids back and forth, often in our own vehicles, to Amarillo for visits to help the parents who cannot afford the gas to get to our facility to pick their child up. I personally have driven kids to home visits in Borger, El Paso, Oklahoma, Dalhart, Hereford, Plainview, Tulia and I have picked up kids from church camps and bereavement camps on the weekends, on my personal time, who were not even on my caseload! We also have a rotating on-call schedule. They are times just like other social workers that we will pick up kids from home visits or deliver them to home visits to places we are not comfortable with, to people we do not even know. I have and still get calls from parents in the middle of the night because their child and themselves just could not get along and they needed help. I have gone to detention centers to pick up kids on my caseloads after they have run away from home visits. I have sat in court with kids. While I am doing all of this, I am also trying to make time for my own three kids, to attend their parent/teacher meetings, to attend their school functions, to attend sporting events, to make them still feel important and loved...oh yeah and sleep and shower! I will say one thing we experience more of in out of home placement since we work more one-on-one with the kids themselves is a high level of disrespect, mistreatment, and ungratefulness from the kids which can be difficult and heartbreaking to take when you are working so hard to make their lives and futures successful. Unfortunately, my job often requires me to do things on my own time taking away from my kids, my husband, and my own family. I do it because it's not a paycheck for me! I do it because I have a true desire to help and a true desire to want to make things better for families...because I want to help them get back to the place they were before they got lost. Clearly I am not doing it for the fame, the recognition, or because my solitaire score is badass! So when people say we just sit in our office all day, we just play computer games, we don't have a difficult job, our job is not as important, yes, I take GREAT offense to that.

To put it simply, the world has failed to recognize the enormous physical and moral courage it takes to be an effective social worker. People truly have no idea how many lost children who were headed for prison that social workers and/or counselors have convinced to go into the military or the police force or becoming a fireman or getting into some profession with a great deal of discipline and structure because we knew it would save their life, but that is not something you ever hear about. Are we perfect or is it a perfect system? Absolutely not. We are human and humans are fallible, but when you can show me one profession that doesn't have mistakes, errors, and/or have corruption, I will help you to wake up from the dream you having. There are certainly problems and challenges that must be overcome. However, a great deal of these challenges are connected to the high volume of work that is required to be managed and the nature of the "audit culture" that limits the time available to do quality work which is all placed under the umbrella of the cuts that are placing increasing demands on our services. Plan and simple, we are only one person with so many hours in a day. All we want is for society to take a close enough look to appreciate what social work actually does and in turn provide the care, respect and resources they require to allow them to get on with meeting the needs of the vulnerable people they work so hard to help.