I wrote what follows in an email to a good friend of mine; I think it does a nice job of crystallizing what's up with me of late. Enjoy the cheater's blog entry!
I think I am approaching a point in this crazy world of social work at which I might be able to begin to synthesize the experience into a few words, so this is my best effort -- fingers crossed for an arrow into the heart of the truth of the experience ... or at least in the vicinity of the bull's eye.
The experience of now a year of working at social work is crazy and comical and tragic on multiple levels simultaneously. First, there's the Greek tragedy that is working for a small government bureaucracy, full of procedural quirks, the monotony of the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts of governmental red tape that takes about as much time as my actual work (and this ratio is a definite improvement over my first six months, when I struggled to manage the myriad stupid tasks in something approximating a 40-hour week); the sense of rubbing shoulders, six degrees apart, from small-time elected officials; the insane personalities and cliques endemic to a mid-size government agency.
Then there's the tragedy of the work itself, which is just full immersion in every "social ill" imaginable. Substance abuse, mental illness, criminality, domestic violence, and most of all, grinding, bone-crushing poverty, have been the most common of the lenses through which to view the clients I've worked with. (Oh, and the custody battles that make me want to rip my eyelashes out, one at a time.) The actual work with clients is harder to try to explain, because learning to manage the multiple levels of the job, and having done well at it so far (I've just recently broken through to a new level of feeling competent on a number of fronts), means that the job is actually treating me well, personally. Which is a crazy thing to say, when in a certain sense, I guess you could say I'm benefitting by others' misfortunes. But that's not really what's going on, of course: my goal always is to try to help, and it does affect me deeply when I have to walk away from a situation that I know is awful, but it's not awful enough for me to justify escalating the intervention, which obviously would have its own negative consequences. Above and beyond "do no harm," I'm cultivating the mentality of "leave no trace," which also is not entirely accurate, but it's helpful in terms of a check on my "good intentions."
I feel like a cliche sometimes: the well-meaning middle-aged middle-class white lady who just wants to help. I guess the part of the stereotype that doesn't fit is the idea that the well-meaning white lady is often sort of stupid. I'm not. I try to be as transparent as possible with my clients, especially regarding the legal or technical stuff, which often means I'm talking over their heads. I haven't yet figured out how to translate it into regular talk. But at the same time, I am smart, dammit, and I think sometimes complex concepts just can't be oversimplified, and I don't want to find myself in a situation where I'm talking down to people and, by doing so, misleading or misinforming them.
Yet another level of the work to be mastered, which I've come a long way at in the past three weeks, is the court report writing that I do on a very regular basis. In Emergency Response, we are the first line of direct contact, after the hotline screeners. What this means is that our unit does the least writing of court reports (later on in the life of a case, there are status review reports that are due at least every six months; when you have 25 kids on a caseload, this means workers are probably writing at a minimum 1-2 reports a month, with heavier months when the report-writing schedule gets bunched up). In ER, we only have to write court reports when we need to initiate a CPS case with a family; in those cases, we write the initial court report that gets the ball rolling. So my co-workers in ER write these reports ("petitions") here and there, some workers just write more petitions than others, due to a variety of factors, and sometimes it comes in waves. Bottom line: ER workers don't, as a rule, write a lot of court reports. And when they do, they tend to be on the shorter side. So, in addition to investigating referrals (which may or may not lead to court cases), I also have two other major job functions: I investigate non-relative guardianship applications heard in probate court, and I investigate the teens who have gotten into some trouble with delinquency court, in the event that the court requests that we assess in conjunction with Probation to see which agency would best serve the kid and family. Having these two other functions as part of my job means that every time I'm assigned either of these types of investigations, I am automatically writing a court report. I've just finished a 2 1/2 week period of writing 6 court reports. And Veteran's Day was thrown in there, so I lost a day. I was writing 2 or 3 reports a week; over the week of Veteran's Day, I wrote about one report a day. And the craziest part was that it sort of catapulted me to this Zen place, where I knew everything would get done, and I wasn't worried about it, and I had this clarity, like, I can handle this. I don't really know how or why it happened, but it was true, I did get everything done, and I didn't work on the holiday or on the weekends, and I didn't work overtime, and all my court reports were turned in on time.
After the reports were all turned in, I thought, I wish I could just write all the time for my job. And then it took me a few more days and I realized, oh, that is what I do! I like my job a lot. The county I work for is about to lay off a bunch of people in the position below mine, and it sucks. I think they're using the economy to restructure the organization and lay off people they view as dead weight. It totally sucks, I have all this survivors' guilt about walking in with no seniority, and in effect displacing people with fewer credentials but way more experience. At the same time, I'm just grateful to have a job, and that it's a job, as I say, that I like a lot.
There are several other things that are treating me well these days, primarily our new house (which I love) and my Kid (ditto). Kid A is doing just great -- she blew past walking and is running practically everywhere now. She understands just about everything we say, and has just started learning words at a frightening pace (time for us to cut out the salty sailor talk!); she now knows, in addition to "no" and "shoe," "light," "leaves," "car" (a favorite), "cat," "dog," "duck," "water," "cracker," and just this morning, said "flor" ("flower" in Spanish). She's just come out of a particularly fussy phase (I think it preceded the new developmental leap of learning to talk), but still has moments where she's easily and thoroughly frustrated by knowing what she wants to have or to do, and not being able to get the thing, or to express what she wants. Fortunately, she's fairly easily distractable, as well, so she can often redirect well. She's just so much fun, and she makes us laugh a lot. She's also starting to find things funny, and she loves to "talk" in full Audrey-language sentences that nobody but Audrey understands, but boy is she emphatic about whatever it is she thinks she's saying! She's got inflection mastered.
Our new house is just perfect for us: not too big, not small at all (for us), tons and tons of yard, and all of us have settled in super easily. It feels like home, and it has made a huge difference in my overall quality of life. The cats adjusted almost instantaneously (the only stress in their lives now is the large toddler that chases after them and shrieks with delight when she sees them. They are not fond of this). I feel frustrated a lot of the time, when I think about how I want the house and yard to look, and how little time and money I have to make the place live up to its potential, but I'm trying to take the longer view, and think of it as a marathon rather than a sprint, but it's hard sometimes. And sometimes, it's just great and perfectly fine, because it's a great house.
And now, some pictures:
Taken a few days after her 1st birthday, in mid-July. She was not yet walking on her own.
A few weeks later (early August). Just beginning to walk. Doesn't she look so proud?
Her first hair bow! This hair clip only worked once or twice -- it was waaaay too easy for her to take out herself. We've moved on to teeny tiny hair elastics that she can't pull out. Ask me in a few months if I'm still trying to let her bangs grow out.
Does it get any better than that face?
This was an amazing late summer/early fall afternoon: sunny, windy and cool. Wood chips and climbing on the play structure at the park.
SPAGHETTI!!!
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
And now, some pictures:
Taken a few days after her 1st birthday, in mid-July. She was not yet walking on her own.
A few weeks later (early August). Just beginning to walk. Doesn't she look so proud?
Her first hair bow! This hair clip only worked once or twice -- it was waaaay too easy for her to take out herself. We've moved on to teeny tiny hair elastics that she can't pull out. Ask me in a few months if I'm still trying to let her bangs grow out.
Does it get any better than that face?This was an amazing late summer/early fall afternoon: sunny, windy and cool. Wood chips and climbing on the play structure at the park.
SPAGHETTI!!!
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
