10 Lessons I Learned As A Social Worker
Crucial Advice I Wish I Would Have Had
When I applied and interviewed for my first job as a Social Worker, I had grandeur dreams of changing someone’s life. After being hired and actually doing the work, I learned quickly, that your expectation as a social worker is to do more than help, you are also expected to be a miracle worker. I have been a successful social worker for a decade now, but that was due to continued practiced patience of having the expectation of the unknown. In other terms, you have to be ready for anything and everything. I wish I could have sat down with myself, 10 years earlier, to give some advice to take along to make my career even more fulfilling, and less of a headache. So here I am, sharing it with our new decade of social workers, in hopes that this will help you adjust better to what it is really like to put someone else before yourself.
1. Compassion Fatigue is Real
No one warns you about compassion fatigue. Instead, you wake up one day and give up on being a social worker, not knowing where you went wrong. Compassion fatigue, or “burnout”, happens when you continue to hear someone else’s trauma, or seeing traumatic events regularly.
As a Child Protective Investigator I would have a minimum of a new case a day. These cases would involve hearing children talk about sexual abuse, physical abuse, or neglect. I would continue to type my reports, document my information, then move onto the next case. I was piling all this trauma, one on top of another, without even addressing it. Social workers always feel the need to not ask for help because they know everyone else is just as busy. They also become so jaded, they have no sympathy when someone is on overload.
Make sure to take care of yourself, no matter what. There will always be a case, you do not have to take them all. Have a counselor you can speak with when you feel overwhelmed. Take breaks to do something besides work, and take them frequently. REMEMBER TO EAT! You will not be effective as a social worker if you are not practicing self care.
2. You Are Going to Have Too Many Cases
No matter what, you are going to have too many cases. Sometimes you will have less cases than usual, but it will always be too many cases. When you have a dip in cases, and have less, don’t talk about it with your co-workers. This makes them angry, and you will start getting accused of not getting as many cases as them. Never whine about getting too many cases. That’s your job as a social worker, and it will only feed into negative feelings about being overwhelmed.
Remember to pace yourself with your cases. Again, make sure to practice self care when getting your new assignments. It is going to be hard, but it will be fulfilling to know you are helping so many people in your community.
3. Always be Objective, Don’t Let Emotions Drive You
You are about to hear some of the most horrible things you have ever heard in your life. Your job is to never judge, and always remember, how can you help this individual? Just because someone doesn’t live the same lifestyle, does not mean that it is wrong. It is not against the law to be poor. Some of their lifestyle choices is learned generationally, and they need guidance to make better decisions for a more effective outcome.
As a Child Welfare Worker, I remember receiving a case of a family with a dirty house. When I responded to the home, they had garbage overflowing in the rooms and dog fecal matter in every corner. Dishes piled up on every counter in the kitchen, and I saw bugs scurry when looking in the bathroom. I knew this was my opportunity to find out what was preventing the family to keep their home clean, and put housekeeping services in place to teach the family how to stay on top of the household. We also devised a chore chart so everyone would do their part. I never received a call to that home again, and knew because I came up with a solution for them to be independent, that I was truly helping a family stay together.
4. You Will Work Long Hours, Holidays, Weekends, and in the Middle of the Night
Social work is normally a 24/7 job. People do not plan when to have their life fall apart. They don’t save their issues until Monday at 9:00 AM to be courteous of your weekend. Life happens, and it happens whether you are tired, hungry, or if you have to go pee. Be prepared for that, and that there won’t be anyone there to help you.
One Saturday when I was a Child Protective Investigator I received 7 cases, and worked 17 hours on my own. Of course this was out of the norm, but I spend many weekends clocking 10–20 hours with families, and in the field.
5. Your Family Will Never Understand How Hard it is to do Your Job
Your family will try to be supportive, but they won’t know how to do it to actually help. You won’t know how to ask them for support, and instead you will bottle up all of the trauma you see, and you will keep it moving. This was a hard lesson I had to learn, which ended in several important relationships in my life. You will be blamed over and over for caring more about your work than your family. They will never know what it feels like to have the weight of a life changing decision on their shoulders.
Every social worker I have known has had this issue come up in their personal relationships at least once. I believe it is the number one reason for turnover among social workers who are parents, as opposed to social workers who have no or adult children.
6. You Need to Take it Upon Yourself to Get Training
Training will very rarely be offered to you. Many people will even think training is a pain in the neck, a waste of time, or unnecessary. I have went some of my years doing the bare minimum in training, and felt that I was better equipped when I did more. Mental Health is being learned every month, with new techniques to help those in the field live more productive lives. I have passed on so many great techniques to participants and clients that I learned in my trainings, that I otherwise would have never learned.
Sometimes completing these much needed training swill cost you money out of pocket. It is well worth it, and I encourage you to do it anyway. If you are going to be a social worker, you need to care about your craft, which includes being updated on as much information as possible, and sharing with others what you have found to work in your community.
7. You Will Likely Get PTSD
Social Work is a hard career in the relation that you are getting involved in real, everyday lives of everyday families. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is onset from letting compassion fatigue build and build with no self treatment and help. This is something I wish I would have known right away, and I possibly may have never gone into Social Work in the first place. You will be haunted by certain cases, and you have to remember, you did what you thought was in the best interest of everyone involved.
8. Your Co-Workers Will be Inappropriate
I have found whatever office I work in, this always rings true. Your co-workers will be offensive, and it will be due to a coping mechanism to deal with the reality of what you are seeing and hearing on a daily basis. I look back at some of the heinous jokes I made, and cringe. I know I made those jokes to lighten the mood of just dealing with a child with broken bones, or a mother who overdosed on heroin.
Believe it or not, but having this loose attitude from time to time has helped to increase morale. I’m not saying it is right, but I am saying it is going to happen, and you have to be able to handle an off color joke. Those moments will help you keep sane, in an unforgiving world around you. You are allowed to tell a joke sometimes, it doesn’t have to always be doom and gloom.
9. Smile
You will notice that others around you will start to get into a rut, and will get stuck in a negative attitude. Just like they say on the internet, don’t feed the trolls. Misery loves company, and when you get so stressed out from social work, it can cause you to talk shit about anything and everything in your path, even people you actually care about. A way to battle this dark and dirty monster that would rear its ugly head in the form of one one of my co-workers, would result in a simple smile. I would stay positive. I would be encouraging.
Every morning I would walk around my office and say good morning to everyone, with a smile on my face. Sometimes people wouldn’t even look at me, but I had a good feeling inside of my own self knowing I was giving them the encouragement they needed to get through another hard day. Other times, my co-workers would jokingly say, “Why are you so happy, you make me sick”. I liked being known as the co-worker that could cheer you up on a bad day, and took pride in it.
10. This Job will Change Your Life
This, for a fact, will change your life, and it is up to you if it will be for the better or for the worse. Some people (but rarely) I have spoken to are able to tell me that they have positive memories of being a social worker in child welfare. Most remember it to be an unfulfilling job that sucked out their soul. This type of job will definitely give you mixed feelings on life, and what it is all about when it comes down to the specifics.
Social work has taught me that life is too short to not make a difference in a life somewhere, somehow. It has also taught me that it is too short to work your life away and never enjoy the fruits of your labor. I know I have wasted many years on autopilot, going from house to house, case to case, counting the hours clocked until the next day. After 10 years I finally realize what is important, me.
It was difficult to sit down and write this list, knowing that I was dwelling on how I would change my past, but couldn’t. That’s called shame and regret. You will feel that often as a social worker. In the end, if you love it, do it. If you can devote one year to making a difference, we need it. You are important, and you won’t hear it enough. So here, right now, is my thank you, just for you, for being selfless, and for taking on not just a career, but a life altering experience.
