Woe to the life of a social worker in these heavily bureaucratic times. The ideal of helping people seems to get more buried each day. Case in point, audits. Okay, okay, I heard that collective groan. I know I've bitched about case management audits before. But here's the thing, we're going to be audited yet again by the state in January. State audits are to be expected since this is a new funding program and they are trying to get the kinks out. But the agency that contracts the one I work for has decided to do internal audits at the rate of 20 per month. So, on top of getting ready for the big whammy we have to stop everything each month to get ready for the medium sized whammy. If that wasn't enough, they have also mandated that I personally audit three cases per employee by the end of the year. That's 51 cases I have to audit in less than 5 weeks. I'm taking time off at the end of this year so I have to rush this. If this was all I had to do it wouldn't be a problem but this is just one of many, many things I have to do in the next five weeks.
I'm all for accuracy and standards but doesn't THREE separate audits on the same cases seem awfully time wasting and redundant? It all leads me back to what I've longed believed, people at the top of the social work food chain have way too much time on their hands and have no idea what it is the rest of do on a daily basis. You ever see those horrible news stories about kids getting lost in the system or elderly people found living in their own waste? Is it any wonder why? If the workers on the front line are constantly having to stop everything to meet some stupid paperwork standard they don't have time to be out in the field where it really matters. Human services has just become services. Somewhere along the way, the human just got dropped out.
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