Angels Among Us
It's been a very long time since I posted, my apologies. Quite honestly, I have been a bit of a workaholic the last few years. As many of you know, I am a child protective services worker and about 4 years ago I was selected to be an investigator. It was a lateral transfer, no extra money, but you have to apply and interview to get in. I did it for 3 years but about a little less than a year ago, I couldn't take it any more. The work was fine, dealing with the secondary emotional trauma was manageable, a skill that has taken me a long time to figure out, but I'm human and therefore not completely cold. But it was the amount of work that was getting to me. When I have made angry and snide comments that I worked excessively, I wasn't kidding. I would literally come in at 6:15am, only because the building opens at 6 and one time I beat the guards in and the doors were on an automatic timer to open and I went in when they opened and trip motion sensors... And then I would stay at least until 8pm just typing my investigation protocols and on really bad days, 11:30pm. There was a day I stayed until 12:30pm just to get it done. I even had an emergency that lasted until 1:30am by the time I got back to office. Yes, as in I worked 8.5 hours of over time on a Thursday night/Friday morning and then had to be at work for 5am Friday morning to pick that kid up in time to bring her to school. And for the entire time I was in investigations I can probably count on one hand the number of times I actually took a lunch. Did I mention for a long time those paperwork overtime hours were unpaid? When I first got this job over 5 years ago, I looked at the salary and thought, "Finally!!! A place that knows my worth and will pay me an acceptable salary!" I don't think that way any more. I may have only been employed there for 5 years but in reality, I bet I have put in enough hours to claim at least 7 to 8 years of experience.
At the time I left investigations, I was at near max capacity for case load. Essentially 17 cases is max, I was always around 15 or 16, sometimes I hit 17 but usually had a case due by the end of that week so I had an opening. I was getting an emergency once a week, sometimes twice a week. And I asked for things to be evened out with regards to emergency case distributions. At my breaking point last year, I had received yet another emergency with 3 cases due that week, 16 cases on my desk, and I broke down in my supervisor's office. He didn't believe me that I was being as slammed with a higher number of emergencies than everyone else. So he counted. Of the 5 other people in my unit, he added all of their combined emergencies since the beginning of the year and compared them against my total of emergencies. I had 1 more emergency than all of them combined and he felt really bad. He had kept telling me to come vent about it. I kept telling him venting doesn't help to fix an inequality issue and I needed a solution, not to just piss and moan. Some people played the game to avoid emergencies. When they saw they were coming up on the list and available for a case which could always be an emergency, they went home sick. I can't begin to tell you how many times I felt sick and stuck it out and got an emergency for a reward for my ethics. Some played vacation day and time off games, doing patterns in such a way to avoid emergencies. We had people out on medical leave. We were understaffed and assholes playing games. But as long as I vent, that should be enough for me?
It wasn't, I wanted a life. How selfish of me. I was tired of living my life to work. Yes, I see my job as a calling. I love protective services, I do. I love investigations, actually prefer it, but not the crazed amount of work that is impossible to squeeze into 40 hours a week, or even 60 hours... I went to the manager and demanded things get better or I was out. I was told I might have to file a grievance to leave investigations because I was one of his top 3 investigators. There was an opening in the adolescents department for voluntary services and I grabbed it. The adolescents manager knew me professionally and personally and I trusted him. I was baited and switched. I was told my case load would be voluntary families, people who wanted us involved because their children were severely mentally ill that they needed extra help. Instead, I got a mixed case load of 2 voluntary cases and 8 cases severely mentally ill children (some multiple kids per case) who will age out in the system's care due to their situation...
These children need someone to love them. I am not a mother and by this point, it's not looking too good that I ever will be. For some of these kids I am the closest thing to a mom they have and that's sad because I'm really not a mom... I can't be warm and fuzzy with these kids because most of them are Borderline Personality Disorder and do what they can to manipulate to further their behaviors. I don't have enough alphabet soup (read MSW, LCSW, PhD, etc.) after my last name for several clinicians to take me seriously and we start back at square one every time a provider is switched. It's tough. Teenagers are a pain in the butt enough as it is. As a former pain in the butt, I feel I am justified in saying that. But add severe mental illness on top of it and it's a nightmare. And this is what I signed up to be - unknowingly because stuff was glazed over until I officially transitioned. But I wanted out of investigations. Actually I didn't, I wanted it to get better but they said they couldn't help me so I had to take care of myself. I am happy I made the switch because I am feeling more human and get most of the time at a reasonable hour, but I am still burnt out at this point.
This week was a frustrating one as some of you may have seen on Facebook as I posted about a Tuesday night drinking. I am known for good work ethic and cleaning up messes and making things straight. Supervisors and managers love me because I know my stuff and I document to the high heavens. But as the saying goes; "No good deed goes unpunished." My reward is harder cases and as I mentioned in my Tuesday drinking FB post, cases dumped on me with major documents due less than a month from the transfer date and not started with inconsistent information recorded in the transfer summary which leaves me to scramble because my name is on it. I have no patience for it. I had prolonged starting to fix that case for as long as I could because I was so pissed and I had a metric shit ton of stuff to complete on all my other cases because unfortunately I have a 6 week window where case plans and court work is due all at the same time and this was the middle of it... It was a bad week.
And then yesterday, as I am running out on a case that I am trying to close out, I happen to get into an elevator with an elderly woman. I was harried and trying to squeeze everything in before having to do overtime for a sibling visit that got dumped on me last minute because a coworker was too flip-floppy and made excuses up to the point she was so last minute I could not wait to see if she'd get her shit together to do a visit for April. We only have a few days left... So I coordinate it and I was pissed about it because the children are loud and rambunctious and they revert back to very immature behavior, and very hard to keep wrangled in. Plus, my month to do this visit was last month. I understand they are kids and are excited to see each other and have had to deal with a lot in their lives to the point that I wonder if my life had turned out different would I be like them, but thankfully I was blessed. But as much as I can see that side, it doesn't mean I enjoy having to yell at kids to stop climbing on the tables, screaming at the top of their lungs, throwing shit around, and listen to crying when the older kids scare the younger kids... It is not my idea of a fun Friday night, surprisingly. And after the week I had I was really pissed about it.
So back to this elderly woman in the elevator... She notices I look tired and says so. It's late in the day and she comments I must be glad to be going home. I'm friendly but sarcastic and note I'm not going home because I'm a glutton for punishment and I'm working until 9. She asks why and I debate, do I say something or let it drop. I decide to say I'm a social worker and we don't sleep. For the next 15 minutes this woman tells me how I'm one of her heroes because children need us and very few can do what I do, etc. She went on for a while, one of those times you try to find an out but you can't politely do so. And she told me her mother was a therapist for children and she knew what some kids have to face and she was grateful for people like her mother and me that could help them face it. She told me she knew that social workers aren't often thanked and told they are appreciated but she wanted me to know I was appreciated and thanked me.
Now there are times I like a little pat on the back and then there are times I get very uncomfortable about it. This was a situation I was starting to get uncomfortable because this was out in the open and let's face it, the media vilifies us, admittedly sometimes with good cause, other times, completely unfair because we have confidentiality issues that prevent us from explaining our rationale, thereby defending some of the accusations against us. I don't tell people I am a child protective services worker, I only tell them "social worker" until I trust them. I've had people threaten me both legally and bodily because of my job. I work in a very violent city, a few years ago we were in the top 5 most violent in the US, as in ALL of the US. I get scared and I try to keep it quiet about my profession. Isn't it a shame I feel this way? Also, let's be perfectly honest here, I have never been good at taking a compliment.
But yesterday as this woman told me I was a hero, I was trying to figure out how to diffuse the conversation because I didn't want others to hear and I always say, I didn't get into this line of work for popularity. We aren't cool like police and firefighters. Kids don't grow up and say, "I want to be a social worker!!" So when someone tells me something nice, my knee-jerk reaction is to deflect it.
I made this mistake years ago working elder protective services. I helped an elderly couple from their abusive son. During my involvement, the wife found out she had stage 4 cancer and died a little while later. The husband, a big gruff guy of few words thanked me for keeping his wife safe in her final days and he would never forget me and would always pray for me. I told him I was just doing my job. He got mad because to him it was his life, not just my job. He yelled at me and got in my face while thanking me at the same time. He was right, it was insulting of me, but I didn't mean that and I was young and inexperienced. So now I get really scared about compliments. I wish they had classes in compliment taking. I need one, obviously.
I had so many things going through my head during yesterday's conversation, given my history. She told me how she had fallen on tough times and had finally saved up enough money to go to the dentist and hasn't been since 1985 because she lost all her money in the stock market. I gave her some advice on services to access to get herself some help. At the end, I thanked her for her kind words to me and that she had made my day. She really had.
After a week of suck, it was a beautiful thing to have someone thank me for my service. It happens very rarely. But yesterday, she was my little angel for helping me to remember why I do what I do.
At the time I left investigations, I was at near max capacity for case load. Essentially 17 cases is max, I was always around 15 or 16, sometimes I hit 17 but usually had a case due by the end of that week so I had an opening. I was getting an emergency once a week, sometimes twice a week. And I asked for things to be evened out with regards to emergency case distributions. At my breaking point last year, I had received yet another emergency with 3 cases due that week, 16 cases on my desk, and I broke down in my supervisor's office. He didn't believe me that I was being as slammed with a higher number of emergencies than everyone else. So he counted. Of the 5 other people in my unit, he added all of their combined emergencies since the beginning of the year and compared them against my total of emergencies. I had 1 more emergency than all of them combined and he felt really bad. He had kept telling me to come vent about it. I kept telling him venting doesn't help to fix an inequality issue and I needed a solution, not to just piss and moan. Some people played the game to avoid emergencies. When they saw they were coming up on the list and available for a case which could always be an emergency, they went home sick. I can't begin to tell you how many times I felt sick and stuck it out and got an emergency for a reward for my ethics. Some played vacation day and time off games, doing patterns in such a way to avoid emergencies. We had people out on medical leave. We were understaffed and assholes playing games. But as long as I vent, that should be enough for me?
It wasn't, I wanted a life. How selfish of me. I was tired of living my life to work. Yes, I see my job as a calling. I love protective services, I do. I love investigations, actually prefer it, but not the crazed amount of work that is impossible to squeeze into 40 hours a week, or even 60 hours... I went to the manager and demanded things get better or I was out. I was told I might have to file a grievance to leave investigations because I was one of his top 3 investigators. There was an opening in the adolescents department for voluntary services and I grabbed it. The adolescents manager knew me professionally and personally and I trusted him. I was baited and switched. I was told my case load would be voluntary families, people who wanted us involved because their children were severely mentally ill that they needed extra help. Instead, I got a mixed case load of 2 voluntary cases and 8 cases severely mentally ill children (some multiple kids per case) who will age out in the system's care due to their situation...
These children need someone to love them. I am not a mother and by this point, it's not looking too good that I ever will be. For some of these kids I am the closest thing to a mom they have and that's sad because I'm really not a mom... I can't be warm and fuzzy with these kids because most of them are Borderline Personality Disorder and do what they can to manipulate to further their behaviors. I don't have enough alphabet soup (read MSW, LCSW, PhD, etc.) after my last name for several clinicians to take me seriously and we start back at square one every time a provider is switched. It's tough. Teenagers are a pain in the butt enough as it is. As a former pain in the butt, I feel I am justified in saying that. But add severe mental illness on top of it and it's a nightmare. And this is what I signed up to be - unknowingly because stuff was glazed over until I officially transitioned. But I wanted out of investigations. Actually I didn't, I wanted it to get better but they said they couldn't help me so I had to take care of myself. I am happy I made the switch because I am feeling more human and get most of the time at a reasonable hour, but I am still burnt out at this point.
This week was a frustrating one as some of you may have seen on Facebook as I posted about a Tuesday night drinking. I am known for good work ethic and cleaning up messes and making things straight. Supervisors and managers love me because I know my stuff and I document to the high heavens. But as the saying goes; "No good deed goes unpunished." My reward is harder cases and as I mentioned in my Tuesday drinking FB post, cases dumped on me with major documents due less than a month from the transfer date and not started with inconsistent information recorded in the transfer summary which leaves me to scramble because my name is on it. I have no patience for it. I had prolonged starting to fix that case for as long as I could because I was so pissed and I had a metric shit ton of stuff to complete on all my other cases because unfortunately I have a 6 week window where case plans and court work is due all at the same time and this was the middle of it... It was a bad week.
And then yesterday, as I am running out on a case that I am trying to close out, I happen to get into an elevator with an elderly woman. I was harried and trying to squeeze everything in before having to do overtime for a sibling visit that got dumped on me last minute because a coworker was too flip-floppy and made excuses up to the point she was so last minute I could not wait to see if she'd get her shit together to do a visit for April. We only have a few days left... So I coordinate it and I was pissed about it because the children are loud and rambunctious and they revert back to very immature behavior, and very hard to keep wrangled in. Plus, my month to do this visit was last month. I understand they are kids and are excited to see each other and have had to deal with a lot in their lives to the point that I wonder if my life had turned out different would I be like them, but thankfully I was blessed. But as much as I can see that side, it doesn't mean I enjoy having to yell at kids to stop climbing on the tables, screaming at the top of their lungs, throwing shit around, and listen to crying when the older kids scare the younger kids... It is not my idea of a fun Friday night, surprisingly. And after the week I had I was really pissed about it.
So back to this elderly woman in the elevator... She notices I look tired and says so. It's late in the day and she comments I must be glad to be going home. I'm friendly but sarcastic and note I'm not going home because I'm a glutton for punishment and I'm working until 9. She asks why and I debate, do I say something or let it drop. I decide to say I'm a social worker and we don't sleep. For the next 15 minutes this woman tells me how I'm one of her heroes because children need us and very few can do what I do, etc. She went on for a while, one of those times you try to find an out but you can't politely do so. And she told me her mother was a therapist for children and she knew what some kids have to face and she was grateful for people like her mother and me that could help them face it. She told me she knew that social workers aren't often thanked and told they are appreciated but she wanted me to know I was appreciated and thanked me.
Now there are times I like a little pat on the back and then there are times I get very uncomfortable about it. This was a situation I was starting to get uncomfortable because this was out in the open and let's face it, the media vilifies us, admittedly sometimes with good cause, other times, completely unfair because we have confidentiality issues that prevent us from explaining our rationale, thereby defending some of the accusations against us. I don't tell people I am a child protective services worker, I only tell them "social worker" until I trust them. I've had people threaten me both legally and bodily because of my job. I work in a very violent city, a few years ago we were in the top 5 most violent in the US, as in ALL of the US. I get scared and I try to keep it quiet about my profession. Isn't it a shame I feel this way? Also, let's be perfectly honest here, I have never been good at taking a compliment.
But yesterday as this woman told me I was a hero, I was trying to figure out how to diffuse the conversation because I didn't want others to hear and I always say, I didn't get into this line of work for popularity. We aren't cool like police and firefighters. Kids don't grow up and say, "I want to be a social worker!!" So when someone tells me something nice, my knee-jerk reaction is to deflect it.
I made this mistake years ago working elder protective services. I helped an elderly couple from their abusive son. During my involvement, the wife found out she had stage 4 cancer and died a little while later. The husband, a big gruff guy of few words thanked me for keeping his wife safe in her final days and he would never forget me and would always pray for me. I told him I was just doing my job. He got mad because to him it was his life, not just my job. He yelled at me and got in my face while thanking me at the same time. He was right, it was insulting of me, but I didn't mean that and I was young and inexperienced. So now I get really scared about compliments. I wish they had classes in compliment taking. I need one, obviously.
I had so many things going through my head during yesterday's conversation, given my history. She told me how she had fallen on tough times and had finally saved up enough money to go to the dentist and hasn't been since 1985 because she lost all her money in the stock market. I gave her some advice on services to access to get herself some help. At the end, I thanked her for her kind words to me and that she had made my day. She really had.
After a week of suck, it was a beautiful thing to have someone thank me for my service. It happens very rarely. But yesterday, she was my little angel for helping me to remember why I do what I do.