The FAMCare Blog

Casework can be very rewarding. So naturally, as you study hard and get through tough exams and finally get to practice—you’re going to be pretty excited. And you should be because you’ll be making a real difference in people’s lives and helping them turn things around on a daily basis.

But you’ll soon find out that social work is one of the toughest jobs out there. Not only because there are real people and emotions involved, but also because it’s demanding work.

From long working hours to massive caseloads, here are a few ways to manage your early years as a caseworker.

Social workers are gifted and dynamic individuals that are constantly on a mission to make the world and our societies better spaces for everyone. While their work can be very rewarding, it’s also extremely challenging. But one of their finest qualities is that they’re incredibly resilient and are able to handle all kinds of cases involving addictions, abuse, trauma, mental illness, and other significant issues in their clients’ lives.

At year end we like to take a look over our shoulder at the vast army of social workers who have supported our country's most vulnerable populations throughout the year. The purpose of this annual overview is to tell social workers nationwide that we appreciate the task their profession has undertaken. Last week we looked at the vast mission of HHS workers across the country. This week we're focusing on child welfare workers. We are astounded here at GVT by the magnitude of the need that social workers in all fields attempt to alleviate and find ourselves rededicated to our mission to help the social work community fulfill its mission.

Toward the end of every year, we like to step back and take a look at the social work profession through a longer lens. Social workers, like all busy professionals, tend to get buried in the minutiae of their work and lose sight of the bigger picture. We find that it helps our colleagues to maintain perspective by taking an annual long look at the profession as a whole and the important work that social workers are engaged in.

Nearly 500,000 people died from opioid overdoses from 1999-2019. This epidemic of opioid overdose deaths can be outlined in three distinct waves.

1. The first wave began with increased prescribing of opioids in the 1990s, with overdose deaths involving prescription opioids (natural and semi-synthetic opioids and methadone) increasing since at least 1999.
2. The second wave began in 2010, with rapid increases in overdose deaths involving heroin.
3. The third wave began in 2013, with significant increases in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, particularly those involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl. More than 14,000 deaths involving illicitly manufactured synthetics occurred in 2019, which is equivalent to about 38 deaths per day.

The history of social work is replete with religious organizations that were the early founders of social work and prayed for, with, and over clients as a matter of course. However, as secular and governmental social service agencies assumed a greater share of society’s burden of need issues of religious freedom and separation of church and state began to crop up.

PTSD is a disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. The condition may last months or years, with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.

Juvenile Justice caseworkers manage cases for "best case" outcomes and "case closed" status. When they are assigned a client, the case worker monitors and supports that youth from their first offense through juvenile court, detentions and residential or other out-of-home placements. The progress of a youth through the juvenile justice system is often long and arduous from intake, booking, and registration to court action, fines, detention, sentencing, probation, and residential placement. Frequently, these same youthful offenders are "cross-over" cases that have come to the attention of both child protective services and juvenile justice case workers.

The American Worker

Since the decline of the union movement and the offshoring of most manufacturing jobs to cheaper labor markets, the American worker has had a systemic labor problem. The kinds of jobs that were so plentiful in the economy after World War II are no longer available. Small one-industry towns across the country have seen their factories close and residents move to the smokestack cities.

Health care social workers who support medical professionals are reporting a dramatic increase in burnout in America's nursing community.  They say that the rapidly escalating surge in COVID-19 infections across the U.S. has caused a shortage of nurses and other front-line staff in virus hot spots that can no longer keep up with the flood of unvaccinated patients and are losing workers to burnout.