The FAMCare Blog

Research from the National Alliance on Mental Illness found that 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year. As more people seek treatment for their mental illnesses, behavioral disorders and emotional hardships, the need for qualified mental health professionals is booming, and the social worker’s role in actively supporting the mental health of individuals has become a vital part of the modern mental health care tableaux.

Once a year we like to step back and take a look at the evolving Social Work profession. What began as a career almost strictly for women who were compelled to help their less fortunate fellow man, has evolved into a highly sophisticated profession often requiring advanced degrees that attracts both men and women from all walks of life.

According to the National Association of Social Workers, there are over 700,000 social service professionals in the US and at least three million globally.

Social workers, regardless of their demographics, area of expertise, or the community they serve, are all the same regarding ethical practices of the service. Unique in their own ways, the ethics of case management unite all social workers and case managers serving their respective communities worldwide.

Today, in this blog, we will look at some of the most needed case management ethics that make social service one of the most prestigious professions across the globe.

Social workers specializing in criminal justice have been dealing specifically with the rapid rise in police related violence since the onset of the COVID pandemic. They were surprised to discover that police are suffering from PTSD at an elevated rate. Yet this is what’s happening every day around the country as police officers with PTSD are thrust daily into fast-moving and dangerous situations. The estimated rates of PTSD in police officers range from 15% to 35%. In fact, the higher estimate is roughly equivalent to what the National Center for PTSD estimates as the lifetime prevalence of PTSD in combat veterans of the Vietnam War.

Steve Jobs famously said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” We are only now beginning to understand to what degree the digital revolution that he inspired has changed the world.

“Title 42, the policy that allowed the government to quickly turn away certain migrants at the border during the Covid-19 pandemic, is set to expire. Encounters between US border agents and undocumented immigrants had fallen early this year but have recently increased to around 7,000 per day. That number is expected to rise dramatically this week as border towns in northern Mexico are already bursting with an estimated 36,000 migrants waiting for the end of Title 42.” (CNN, May 8,2023).

Social workers are mission-centric personalities who join the profession to do some good. For the most part they are idealists who gradually get caught up in the minutia of the large bureaucracies they work within, and their vision of a better future gets a little blurry. Every year we like to take a step back to help refocus the collective vision of the ideal future that inspired social workers to join the profession in the first place. We interviewed four caseworkers of varying years’ experience working in diverse specialties and asked them why they became social workers.

As stated in Article 40 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child:

"Every child in conflict with the law has the right to be treated in a manner that takes into account “the desirability of promoting [his/her] reintegration and [his/her] assuming a constructive role in society.”

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demographics and logistics of the Social Work profession have shifted dramatically. Social workers are on the move, and telehealth has become ubiquitous. Social workers, however, are finding it more problematic than they had imagined moving from state to state. With ten years’ experience and a graduate degree from a major university they expected to simply fill out some kind of “transfer form” to get re-licensed in the state they were relocating to. In other words, they expected a high degree of “reciprocity” from state to state. This, however, is not always the case.

Recent estimates place the number of social workers in the US at around 700,000. Social workers in the US have a lot on their plates working for a variety of social services, such as child welfare, senior services, veteran services, and juvenile justice.
Casework in US social services is difficult, whether it is tending to family services difficulties or making sure that foster children have enough support. Fortunately, we have some advice to assist you manage your caseload more effectively while constantly taking care of your mental and physical well-being.

Check out these four case management ideas for 2023 to assist you in managing your workload and taking better care of yourself as a caseworker.