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.

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.

In the beginning, pioneering social workers responded to the most critical and immediate needs of the destitute, the homeless, and orphans. But as the 20th century wore on social services recognized a more nuanced and complex catalogue of vulnerabilities. Social workers, aid organizations, government agencies, and communities began to support people presenting a complexity of needs like poverty brought on by addiction and child abuse resulting from mental illness or homeless juvenile offenders fighting to escape the drug culture they were raised in.

The goal of social workers is to support their local communities. However, given the incredibly rapid requirements in all areas of their work, from case management, collaboration with stakeholders, to the procedure of client data intake, social workers must take into consideration new procedures, processes, and innovative approaches to the system.

Check out the best practices that social workers can employ to advance their initiatives and impact by utilizing data, encouraging client collaboration, and maximizing outcomes for individuals and communities.

For those working in child services, an understanding of family situations is vital in being able to help improve child welfare. Fortunately for those agencies, utilizing the right social services software can help streamline processes and effectively “humanize” the various situations.

The goal is to always be improving child welfare through various services, responses and interventions, and with the right social services software on your side, the tasks can become easier to track and perhaps even more simple.

Addiction is a disease, not a crime. The American Society of Addiction Medicine recognizes addiction as “a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.”