The FAMCare Blog

The things you do as a caseworker can have a great impact on the lives of those in your care. You are both the lead investigator and client advocate. You recommend what social services would best fit their needs. You give support and referrals, then follow up on each client’s progress. It is a demanding, but rewarding job. You're helping people improve their situations and create a better life in the long run.

Our senior population continues to grow, with the aging of the baby boomers. And with the glut of older citizens comes a glut of issues that elder care workers must deal with. There are health issues – both physical and mental. Muscles and bones get weaker, senses start to fail – hearing, eyesight, even touch, taste and smell, in some cases. And then there’s the loss of mental facilities. About 10% of people over 65 suffer from some form of dementia and it goes up to 32% for those over 85.

We are in an unprecedented stretch of strong economic conditions where where there are more jobs then job applicants. Yet, there are still many children and families who are suffering and in need of government agency help. So many, in fact, that human services caseworkers often still feel overwhelmed by heavy caseloads and the accompanying paperwork.

Despite low unemployment rates and a fairly strong economy, the number of homeless and food insecure continue to rise. According to the recently released State of the Homeless 2019 report, as of January, in New York City alone, an all-time record number (63,839) of men, women and children slept in shelters each night. And, according to Feeding America, 40-million people struggle with hunger in the U.S., including more than 12-million children.

If you run a shelter or food bank, chances are you have more to do and more to process every day. That’s where having the right social services software can help you focus more on providing food and shelter and less on paperwork and processes.

A new resource guide is available that helps to keep our teens and youth safe.  If you'd like to grab a copy - you can get it here:  https://www.staysafe.org/teens/ 

A resource for finding Federal grants to fund youth programs has been shared with our team.  You can find information on the http://youth.gov website.

How we care for the most vulnerable among us is one of the great challenges of our time. As Mahatma Ghandi once said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” And social workers are hard-pressed to find one group in more dire need of urgent attention than children at risk of neglect or abuse.

In recent years, funders are demanding that social service organizations analyze their program activities and outputs in a more meaningful way. For agencies to just say they are “doing good” is no longer enough. Organizations now need to justify costs by demonstrating program value. They must be able to justify their programs and funding by illustrating the quality of their services and show that their programs are producing meaningful outcomes that are aligned with larger policy priorities.

For those working in child services, an understanding of family situations is vital in being able to

help improve child welfare. Fortunately for those agencies, utilizing the right social services

software can help streamline processes and effectively “humanize” the various situations.

The goal is to always be improving child welfare through various services, responses and

interventions, and with the right social services software on your side, the tasks can become

easier to track and perhaps even more simple.

In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In August 2018, there were 62,166 homeless people, including 15,189 homeless families with 22,511 homeless children, sleeping each night in the New York City municipal shelter system. The number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping each night in municipal shelters is now 79% higher than it was ten years ago, and families make up three-quarters of the homeless shelter population.