The FAMCare Blog

Social work is hard work. It’s stressful and it often seems like you can never get ahead. There is always so much more you can do, if you only had the time, energy and budget to do it. The holidays can be even more stressful, as many clients deal with tough times during the holidays.

Louise, a crusty journey-woman social worker had three pairs of glasses hanging from tiny chains around her neck and a sharpened yellow number two pencil plunged into her beehive hairdo. How unlikely that this woman would teach us how to use humor in social work.

Being a case manager is stressful work. The hours are long. The caseloads are heavy. Budgets are tight. And you are often dealing with people facing some of the worst moments of their lives. We have discussed in previous posts different ways that social workers can achieve case manager stress relief. In this post we look at some organizational tactics to reduce stress for your case managers.

Nobody understands your stress and how to deal with it better than those in the trenches with you. In previous blogs we have shared ideas on both physical and mental ways to create some level of case manager stress relief. But for today’s post, we talked to case managers and mental health professionals who deal with the stress of the job every day and asked them to share the best ways they find stress relief.

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.

You have good caseworkers who are committed to their clients. They work long hours and go above and beyond to make sure everyone is getting the help they need. Yet, it’s still too easy for someone to slip through the cracks if you’re using an antiquated or old school record system. Or if the caseworker is overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time to do it. Using the right case management software can alleviate some of these issues and help make sure nobody falls through the cracks.

Performance anxiety can often add to the high stress experienced by social work case managers. After all, social worker performance isn’t about how many widgets you make or how much profit you brought to the bottom line. It’s about helping real people deal with real life problems. If your performance is lacking, it could mess up someone’s life or even end it. That's the mindset that leads to social worker performance anxiety.

We know that being a case manager can be very stressful. There is never enough time, budget or resources to do everything you want to do. And the work you do is so vitally important. It affects people's lives. That's why our case management software is designed to help relieve some of the stress in your everyday workflow.

We know that being a case manager comes with a lot of different stressors. It's just part of the job. But we want to help ease some of that stress. This is another post in our ongoing series of blogs on case manager stress relief.