scottwallard.com

Interesting piece in Governing.com - Jonathan Walters discusses some common administrative and workplace safety challenges that social service organizations face today. If you haven’t read his stuff at Governing.com, it is worth checking out.

One challenge is simply maintaining staffing levels.

“The low pay, the long hours, the constant pressure, the politics involved all add up to a level of wear and tear that drives people out of the profession and into other work–or at least into other branches of the work that aren’t so difficult.”

Turnover is problematic. Good staff transfer off the frontline, are promoted to administrative positions, or are hired away by other governmental or private organizations. The frequent churning of staff is particularly problematic in rural areas or remote communities, where there may not be large pools of professionally trained staff seeking work. Turnover also is a function of funding. Staffing levels can be unpredictable due to cuts in program funding. In my own work, I’ve found that about 1/2 of service organizations experiencing funding cuts have to reduce staffing levels as a result.

Walters details a meeting with county government service administrators and discussing the problem of turnover, particularly among child welfare caseworkers, where he asked if turnover could be reduced by offering frontline staff more money.

“No,” came one response that drew wide and vociferous agreement, “they want guns.”

Guns? Likely a somewhat glib response to his question about turnover, but Walters cites several survey findings highlighting the risks caseworkers face when completing their daily duties.

A 2002 survey of 800 social workers found that a fifth had been the victims of violence and that two-thirds had been threatened.

A 2006 national study of 5,000 licensed social workers found that more than 40 percent regard personal safety as a day-to-day on-the-job concern.

Nearly 600 exit interviews of human services workers and found that 90 percent had experienced verbal abuse, 30 percent had been attacked and 13 percent had been threatened with weapons.

These data points are consistent with the security - sometimes armed security - in place to ensure staff safety in many health and human service organizations. Not only do caseworkers encounter individuals whose behavior may be unpredictable due to mental health and substance abuse problems, but caseworkers often also are the bearers of bad news that can negatively affect families and draw emotional responses. For instance, caseworkers generally are the ones to notify families of removal of children from homes, denial of benefits, lack of eligibility, and cuts to assistance.

In addition to ensuring that federal, state, and local government maintain public commitments to supporting social service programs and cultivating greater private support of social service organizations, Walters notes the importance of legislation moving through Congress designed to strengthen the field of social work and promote safety for caseworkers. A rundown of the agenda prmoted by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and its advocacy partners can be found here.

Safety Net

On Thursday, I spoke at the 11th Annual Social Justice Conference at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, IA. The conference provided a great opportunity for me to share my work about poverty and the safety net in rural areas, but also to learn from more than 150 social workers in the Quad City region.

During the talk, there was time for the audience discuss the challenges facing safety net organizations in rural Iowa. Several keen observations were made:

Even slight increases in earnings can make working poor individuals ineligible for work supports and income supports, or reduce their benefits, making families worse off for their modest labor market gains.

The discussion that followed reminded me of work by Jennifer Romich at the University of Washington, which has explored the effective marginal tax rates on low-income workers. Indeed, working poor households and the agencies that help them face a dizzying array of different eligibility determinations for cash assistance, housing subsidies, and medical care. Modest increases in work earnings can upend one’s access to supports that help families become healthier, stronger, and more self-sufficient, even though those families are negligibly better off.

Nonprofits in Iowa, as in most states and communities, are struggling with how to serve rising numbers of individuals seeking help amidst significant budget cuts.

This will be a tough challenge moving forward for many public and nonprofit agencies, and one that is likely to endure for the next few years as unemployment and poverty rates remain high - even if there is economic recovery soon. Agencies will be forced to make tough trade-offs between cutting staff, triaging clients and providing help only to the neediest, offering more modest services, and expanding waiting lists. A bad set of choices. Interestingly, one audience member said she used an anonymous web survey to collect ideas from staff about how to cut costs with as little impact on clients as possible. Her board was reviewing the many recommendations and deciding how to move forward.

Because most nonprofit service organizations draw on many different revenue sources, they face the administrative challenge of complying with various reporting requirements from these different revenue sources. At a time when there are greater demands on all staff, these tasks can take time away from case management and providing services.

Another tough challenge. On the one hand, program evaluation and reporting are critical to ensuring program quality and to improving program models. On the other hand, time spent on compliance documents takes time away from clients and from addressing the fallout of the current economic environment.

My visit provided sobering insight into the tough tasks facing the social workers that staff the street-level organizations upon which our safety net rests.

Nonprofit Organizations