What to do if you cant get a hold of the social worker | Episode 46: The Secret: How To Fight CPS & Win

The secret life of a social worker

In a social work workplace, there is no irony quite like that found. In order to survive to grind, it is dark, improper, and absolutely necessary. Our office is full of sugar, caffeine, and good intentions. A nightmare for eating regularly is the long hours and fluctuating levels of tension, and many people float along on a diet of biscuits, fizzy drinks, and an endless round of birthday cakes. After yet another urgent call-out, though, it helps to realize that you can eat something from the filing cabinet on top of a court appearance you didn't expect that day, and then discuss conspiratorially with your colleagues if you're going to bother logging it on whatever weight loss app makes the rounds.

On a school night, it is best not to drink because you never know what the next morning will bring. This can include an unannounced home visit on a normal day to see whether an abusive ex-partner has moved back in, followed by a meeting to determine the next steps to help parents whose eight-year-old is not still in school. Before traveling through the city in rush-hour traffic to meet some potential adopters and see if they could be the right fit for a one-year-old who can't be rehabilitated home, the afternoon could be spent finding out what to do with a young client who has postponed a meeting, probably so they can see the person you assume is taking advantage of them.

I chose social work because I wanted to do a job which meant that I wasn't just skating on life's surface. With caring, attentive parents, I had a good start, and I realized that my own strong foundation was the reason I could usually cope with life in all its seasons. Our families sometimes start out with no basis to talk about, and all social workers believe they are "our" and it is a scramble to fill the holes somewhere, with specialists, programs, other family members, and friends all attempting to fix, bail water and pull together to keep them afloat.

Invariably, when people find out what I do, they respond by saying, 'Wow, I couldn't do that,' followed by a slightly longer pause than a comfortable one, and then a short consolation, 'but it must be very rewarding.' I have to confess that I don't very often confess that last point because it's said with such well-meaning hope. As a social worker, I really can't bear to describe what rewarding really entails. We don't get to yell about success stories. We don't have the right to broadcast them. A family doing OK is satisfying, that's it, and that's no one's business but theirs.

Social work is all about partnerships, and the ability to handle these will make the career or break it. You have to get used to letting people down and letting people down on their own because it's hard to satisfy the needs of everyone. It's like constantly keeping several browser screens open, day and night. Even if you go home and try to shut it down, you know that the kids on your caseload are still living their life, no matter how bad, and that it can all fall apart at any moment.

I've sat quite a few times on excrement. It's never easy to point out to someone that their dog left a lock on the couch, but what you can hope for is that they understand that it's not all right. But it was probably my lowest moment to break the news to a child that their mom was caught shoplifting again so that they wouldn't go home with her like she had promised. High points tend to be when young people, finally talking about what is going on in their lives, come out of their shell over time; or the occasional epiphany when a parent understands what they can do to improve.

It was natural to assist those who needed a lower level of assistance when I first started out, such as families needing help working out their finances and getting hold of necessities like beds for their homes, but now it's as if these cases have disappeared. The families and the need are still there, of course, but there is no room on our caseload to support them, so they are left to other overstretched agencies whose budgets are being cut. Colleagues who have been around longer than me agree that in terms of poverty, this is the worst they have known it to be. How do we expect people, when they can't feed their children or put shoes on their feet, to begin solving behavioral problems?

The cases I hate the most are drug-using parents. It's heartbreaking to try to support people in the grip of addiction while also determining what the effect on their children might be. When a child answers the door and you go inside and see that they are doing it again in the eyes of their parents, your heart sinks. We have a lot of resources to try to help children come to grips with the addiction of their parents, but when drugs are put first, drugs take all the money, drugs get all the attention, nothing can repair the sense of rejection.

Among social workers, their supervisors, a jury in certain places, and then finally a judge, the decision to take a child away from their parents is made. At the same time, it is the hardest option that you have ever had to be part of and one of the most rigorously considered. In critical cases, if a child has to be removed, anything else stops before that child is healthy. Ultimately, it may be a relief that they are out of harm's way, but it is a very difficult decision because we realize that moving a child itself causes harm.

Day in and day out, the fear of missing something dogs you. At 3 am, it is the voice in your mind, the thought that distracts you from the bath-time of your own children, the thing that rises on a Friday night as the weekend looms long, but you can't help but wonder how that child is, what they are enduring away from school safety and observation.

My greatest sorrow is always when I travel to work and have to leave people behind. There is never a good time to quit a case and put them in a position to get yet another social worker to start from scratch. But we are still people, and we have to move on occasionally.

#lawyer, #attorney, #immigration lawyer, #lawyers near me, #personal injury lawyer, #divorce lawyer, #car accident lawyer, #divorce lawyers, #bankruptcy attorney, #law firm, #barrister, #divorce attorney, #family law, #divorce lawyers near me, #solicitor, #employment law, #real estate attorney, #family law attorney, #immigration lawyer near me, #personal injury attorney, #real estate lawyer, #injury lawyer, #business law, #accident lawyer, #criminal defense attorney, #divorce attorney near me, #david boies, #attorney at law, #bankruptcy lawyer, #law office, #corporate law, #law firms near me, #car accident attorney, #immigration attorney, #tax attorney, #workers comp lawyer, #bankruptcy lawyers near me, #malpractice lawyer, #medical malpractice lawyer, #employment attorney, #family lawyer near me, #accident attorney, #michael avenatti Nike, #estate planning attorney, #probate lawyer, #tax lawyer, #injury attorney, #medical malpractice attorney, #law offices near me, #dui lawyer