The FAMCare Blog

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.

A Caseworker's Christmas Card

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Oh, That I Might...

Be the Adult

Remember the Forgotten

Heal the Abused

Bring Homeless Home

Feel the Fear

Be Hope in Despair

Free the Imprisoned Spirit

Redeem Relapse

Feed Souls

Touch the Lonely

Venerate the Aged

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"And if I cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that I should leave my work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy...

For if I bake bread with indifference, I bake a bitter bread, that feeds but half man’s hunger."

~ "Work" by Kahlil Gibran

 

Peace in 2022

Most social workers feel enthusiastic and passionate about their work at the beginning of their careers. However, as the years roll by, the spark dies—or rather drowns in the piles of paperwork due, thanks to overwhelming caseloads.  This is only natural given that there is a serious shortage of social workers in the US.  And it’s estimated that this shortage will grow into quite a national crisis by 2030. This increases the caseload per worker and makes human services case management much harder.

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.

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.

Foster Care to Adoption

Of the 428,000 children in foster care in the U.S., over 30% cannot be returned to their families and are waiting to be adopted. 135,000 children are adopted each year and there are currently 1.5 million adopted children in the United States. 59% are from the child welfare (or foster) system. Children enter foster care through no fault of their own because they have been abused, neglected or abandoned. These children are in the temporary custody of the state while their birth parents are given the opportunity to complete services that will allow the children to be returned to them if it is in the children’s best interest. Unfortunately, 30% of them never make it.

Social workers Dre’ Johnson and Renee Brean are part of a pioneering new approach to policing in Rochester, New York. They belong to the city's “person in crisis” team – a unit of mental health and behavioral professionals who attend police calls where a person may be suffering a mental health episode.

The premise behind the "person in crisis" team is simple: it contends that for all their training and skills, police are not equipped to deal with the complexities that a mental health crisis requires. By sending mental health professionals along to 911 calls that may involve potential psychological breakdowns, officials hope that these situations can be dealt with more sensitively, and more safely.