Ho, ho, hum...

I've never been one to let the holiday season get to me. In fact, I'm the opposite of how people usually react this time of year. I am decidedly a holiday kind of girl. Yet, I can clearly see that the people that I supervise at work are getting more and more stressed each day. December is the hardest month in Social Work. It's the month that everything has to be done and many, many demands are placed on the workers. Fiscal is demanding that all authorizations get completed asap so they can begin closing out the books for the year. Management is demanding that all case notes are entered in the system files and up to date so they can start their projections for next year. Our clients are demanding to get immediate services so they can be assured that they will not lose their coverage for next year. Service providers are demanding that we take a look at their service rates now in anticipation of getting a rate increase for next year. Throw in the inevitable health crisis and all this makes for a very tense work place. Not to forget that when the workers go home they are rushing around doing everything they need to make the holidays happen at their homes. (Yes, Van, vodka does work for this!) My crew is starting to snap at each other which proves that you always take it out on the people you are closest to. Yesterday, I sat them all down to give them a little pep talk. I did my best Lombardi and they seemed to get it.

Overall, the most difficult thing to learn in Social Work is this - We can only do the best that we can do. That sounds so defeatist but. contrary to what most people think, Social workers really can only intervene so much. We have to rely on an entire system of red tape and bureaucracy to make anything happen. It's incredibly frustrating because red tape and bureaucracy rarely, if ever, work by common sense. Let me put it this way. "They" tell us it is our job to go out and assess people to see what it is they need to lead more productive lives. "They" send us to training after training about keeping the client at the center of all planning, ascertaining what it is the client would like to have in their lives. "They" preach to us about the importance of making sure disabled people live in the least restrictive, most integrated settings possible. "They" drill into us the importance of finding appropriate work settings for our disabled and the absolute right and need for meaningful activities for all. Then, "they" look at all of the information we have compiled and make decisions about people's lives based solely on whatever the budget will allow which is generally not what the client wants or needs. Then "they" pat each other on the back telling themselves they've done a good job of finding the most cost effective way to meet the needs of the disabled while the social worker is left to monitor substandard services and holds the responsibility of that life in the balance.

Most people who go into this field do so because they really want to help people. It is only after they've been in it for a while that they realize that the quality of the help we give is not always the best. Hence the burn out, the frustration, the feelings of futile uselessness that social workers feel - especially at this time of year.

The best I can do, as their supervisor, is to constantly remind them that they are doing a good job and that they really do make a difference whether they feel it or not. And I hope that they, eventually, will start to feel that for themselves.