Replies

What's hard is being expected to do the work of at least 3 people in this job, and do it as WELL as 3 people could do it. The deadlines don't change because you get too many cases, but it does become literally impossible to meet them, then you get in trouble for not being in compliance, and every time you turn around, they've added new responsibilities and forms to our job without lessening any that were already in existence. So what it comes down to is that larger counties are able to specialize, so that you have different people doing specific jobs. Like you might have one that just works foster care cases, another that does just investigations, another that does home studies, one that handles protective service cases involving neglect and someone else might handle abuse cases and still another work with FINS cases (teenagers in trouble typically) One person might handle the medical forms and doctors and counseling appointments and another might visit the foster homes and keep their records and do support while someone else would be responsible for foster parent recruitment and retention.

In smaller, more rural counties, we do it ALL, and our caseloads aren't much smaller. When you add in all the documentation (the documentation alone takes an hour uninterrupted on a light day....and that's after I get home), affidavits, court reports, client transports, home visits and emergencies, mandatory trainings and conferences, staff meetings, case plans, staffings, school conferences, counsultation with therapists and being available for kids, parents, extended family and foster parents, most of whom think THEY are the most important (if not the only) person/family you have to deal with, not to mention being on call 1 week out of every four (soon to be one out of every 3 because we're losing a worker in July) and whatever extra work that entails....well, let's just say, it gets a tad overwhelming.

I'm exhausted just reading what your job involves - it makes dusting in NH sound like an appealing change.

Good luck with it all.

Let me guess, they're all paper forms that need to be filled out by hand, and all ask for *almost* the same information?