social work appreciation – Bifocals and Barbells

No. No, I don’t have time to write this morning. But since it is about social work and
“not enough time” is a something social workers are used to, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I had a social work dream last night. That’s new for me. There’s a few reasons it may have happened. I’m missing an important event today, our Social Work Appreciation Costco Pizza Extravaganza. I also had some work calls were my lullaby into sleepy time. Also yesterday included a conversation full of sage wisdom about desires to help and the limitations around it.

Since it was new for me, now y’all got to hear it.

I was in my backyard. A woman stranger was wandering in it. She was carrying a newborn baby. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was “losing her shit.”

The baby was hard to hold because it was so new and fragile.

The mom was detached and said “what am I supposed to do? Check myself into the hospital and detox?” I of course supported this decision and then thought about how to get her into detox immediately.

Then I was hit with the reality that I didn’t actually know how to do this. I was counting down to office opening time so I could check with our experts on drug addiction treatment. It felt like a very important window of opportunity was closing quickly.

At some point the mom wandered off. She said she’d be back so I continued to stare at the clock and consider alternatives. I also realized I didn’t know who she was so I looked in a backpack belonging to another child of hers to try to find a name. In doing so, I saw that “junior” carries a copy of custody orders in his backpack which made me long for a different normal for the family conjured by my subconscious. I made a note to find that child and check in with him.

The dream ended before I was able to help problem solve. But not before the baby also morphed back and forth from the dog from Deadpool (dreams are weird).

This situation is completely fabricated from my REM sleep but is also not unrealistic right down to the part where I feel like I let the family down.

Yesterday I was reminded that it’s really easy to “Monday morning quarterback” a lot of the things that happen in social work. All we can do is our best with the information we have at the time and learn from what happened. We also need to remember my very favorite principal in the Social Work Code of Ethics; client right to self-determination.

By nature, social workers are helpers and will continue to pour of themselves to be there for others. I’m very thankful to be a part of something like this and very proud of the people I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside. There’s no amount of pizza that can express that gratitude, but enjoy nonetheless. Sincere thanks for all that you give to help others.

Thanks for reading!

As I stood in line waiting to buy 100 tortillas for the social work appreciation breakfast, I had some time to contemplate the universe.

In a perfect world, child welfare social work wouldn’t exist. We’d all be clamoring for some real jobs because kids would have safety, permanency, and well-being without government intervention. That’s not the reality though.

People are pulled to social work. Every worker I know possesses the intelligence and skills to make an easier living. But they don’t. Everyone has their own reasons for doing the job. Some may have experience in the system. Some may have been those weirdos who as a child felt bad for the toys of theirs that didn’t get played with as much as others (eyeroll…it’s me). Some are drawn by the fascination with human behavior. Some want to fight the system from within. Nonetheless, all want to make the world a better place for someone.

There are variances as to what “better place” means, and how to work through “who’s place should be better” in a world of competing priorities. And then there’s those complications of system limitations and good ol’ client right to self-determination. For those non social workers, client right to self determination is best summed with the classic joke: how many social workers does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to WANT to change.

Social work is caught between camps that think, 1)we don’t do enough and 2)we do too much.

There’s a new Netflix documentary right now about a child who was beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend. 4 social workers were charged criminally for their role in his death. The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez is 6 hours of looking back on a horriific tragedy and trying to assign blame to someone other than the monsters who committed the acts. I’d love to think that it could have been prevented, but I also know that decisions are made hundreds of times a day in which the full impact won’t be known until the story stops somehow. Sometimes our help doesn’t help. We use tools at our disposal and shared decision making in an effort to prevent tragedy, but fully predicting human behavior does not exist. Sometimes, bad things happen despite the very best efforts. The show has caused feelings and conversations filled with critical thinking.

In ironic contrast to the position of the Netflix show, some kindly gentleman set up camp in front of our office to educate the public his belief that child welfare agencies are over involved. Just a little glimpse in to how hard it can be to find the perfect middle ground in intervention.

The external pressures and queries pale in comparison to the pressure the workers put on themselves.

Some social work decisions end up amazing. Others end up with an unofficial jury of your peers passing judgment on them. Others still end in bad things happening. Many end up with some version of okay. The yuck of it is, most decisions can land anywhere on that scale, and the social worker has no idea at the time.

Social workers want nothing more than to do the right thing. And when that’s not clear, or isn’t going to happen, it can be very hard.

God bless their people and pets for being there for them during tough times. They didn’t chose the social work life, but they still deal with the consequences.

if we were really fair, we’d include support pets and people in the hiring process. “Fluffy, what are your thoughts on having your human come home inexplicably crying and not meeting your cat needs as quickly as you’d like?” “Billy, sometimes mom is going to come home from work and hug you a really long time for reasons that aren’t yours to know. How will you deal with that?” “What are you going to say when your husband tells people he’s a social worker and people at the barbeque suddenly act different toward you all?”

We don’t do that though. (Thank goodness, because I could never interview a cat. The last one I met bitch slapped me for trying to pet it like a dog. I didn’t know!). But, we do try to support each other. We try to honor the families that we serve by giving them our best work. And once a year we over eat breakfast burritos to commemorate the decision that we make every day to wake up and be a social worker.