The FAMCare Blog

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.

Employee burnout exists, and according to a recent survey, 23% of full-time workers in the United States experience burnout the majority of the time during the work week. So, if you're a nonprofit leader and you notice that your case workers aren't as enthusiastic as they used to be or are falling behind in their daily tasks, it may be time to look into whether job burnout could be the issue.

While there are numerous traditional methods for motivating caseworkers, we have compiled a list of steps that social service agencies can take on their own. This is to ensure that your case managers are not neglecting themselves or their mental health while serving their communities.

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.

Children deprived of a safe, nurturing family environment are entitled to special protection, assistance and alternative care. And today’s caseworkers can most effectively address this with the right social services software.

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.

We like to celebrate a New Year when the calendar turns its annual page. We believe that a “new” year offers us another chance to turn the bad into the good. However, case workers who work with the most vulnerable among us know that a “new year” is simply an artifice. Every day that case workers go into the office they believe they have an opportunity to turn the bad into the better. Every day is New Year’s Day for case workers.

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.

Suddenly, we have reached the final blog of 2222. What a year it was! The lingering effects of the COVID pandemic continued to impact the elderly and the homeless and shrink the assets available to nonprofits that support them. Rampant inflation started pushing marginalized families over the poverty line and increasing rents rendered many elderly homeless. The disintegration of governments in Central and South America spilled refugees over our southern border into the lap of social services. Child welfare case workers were swamped with children endangered by families disintegrating from financial problems, drug addiction, and stress related mental illness.

Social work is an evolving profession and every year new challenges emerge. When December rolls around it is our custom to interview three experienced social workers (one from the East Coast-one from the West Coast-and one from Nebraska) and ask them to share any new themes that may have emerged in their practices.

According to estimates, the United States has over 680,000 social workers affiliated with various non-profit organizations. Social workers play an important role in the American social fabric, from juvenile justice to veteran services, senior services, and child welfare.

However, in their pursuit of doing good for humanity, social workers occasionally make mistakes that add to their workload and stress. So, if you're a new caseworker about to embark on your journey, this article is for you.

Continue reading to learn about the five rookie mistakes that caseworkers make that can add stress and make their jobs more difficult.