HELP WANTED | Some Valley social workers have left the field entirely, due to burnout

[Editor’s note: This is the seventh report in our multipart series “Help Wanted,” in which Mahoning Matters reviews labor shortages in Mahoning County’s top employment sectors, focusing on jobs that are difficult to fill, have high turnover or are otherwise in high demand. Nationwide, 4.3 million people quit their jobs in December 2021 alone, according to federal data. This report focuses on social workers. Past articles have focused on health and veterinary care, education and food service. Have something to say about local employment rates or in-demand jobs? Email us at news@mahoningmatters.com, send us a confidential tip here or call us toll-free at 888-655-1012.]

___

Since the coronavirus pandemic, local social workers have begun “evaluating their life choices” and putting their own mental and emotional health over career plans, their supervisors told Mahoning Matters.

Julie Rudolph, program administrator for Mahoning County Children Services’ Family Services Department, said social workers who’ve been burning out the past two years amid the pandemic are now considering “what they want for their lives.”

Many are even changing careers, she said.

“Some people are remaining in social work, some people are starting fresh in a totally different kind of job,” Rudolph said. “I think the fact that there are so many opportunities available out there just causes people to take a look around and see what [jobs] are available.”

Rudolph directs four supervisors who each oversee six case workers.

There’s been significant turnover — nearly 40 case worker resignations in the past two years, she said. The agency had 18 resignations in the past 12 months, and 21 in the past nine months, Rudolph said citing internal agency data.

The agency currently has 60 full-time case workers, but still needs to fill nine more positions, Rudolph said.

“It seems like during the pandemic, [our] workforce was quite stable. Everybody was kind of hunkered down, which was really nice,” she said. “I think since the pandemic has been easing up, what people are saying about the ‘Great Resignation’ [is true].”

About 626,000 workers nationwide quit the health and social assistance field this past November, one of the highest quit rates across all employment sectors that month, behind retail, food service and professional and business services, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Nationwide, there were nearly 500,000 fewer workers in the field in February than before the pandemic, according to preliminary data from the bureau.

To manage under-staffing, Rudolph said the agency has restructured job duties to make the caseload less stressful.

“We’re trying to be as engaging as we can be with our [employees] to explain what’s happening and looking for suggestions about how to make the work more manageable,” she said. “We’re trying to partner with our staff to come up with the best way to address the current challenges.”

Rudolph said child welfare workers don’t often see how their work immediately impacts someone, or know where their clients end up — eventually, the case is closed or the families and children exit the system. The lack of feedback makes it challenging to stay in the field long-term, Rudolph said.

“A lot of our clients aren’t dealing with one bad day, they’re dealing with the effects of long-term issues and problems like poverty, lack of educational and employment opportunities,” she said. “So many people who maintain employment in child welfare have the ability to see value in [working] with families, even though the outcomes aren’t always positive.”

Rudolph said child welfare workers feel secondhand the trauma clients and families go through. Personal safety is also a concern with abuse and neglect cases, she said.

Family abuse and neglect cases can be risky for social workers, according to The National Association of Social Workers. They can be targets of verbal and physical assaults while in homes, adding to job-related stress.

“It’s challenging to help families when they’re going through some of their hardest days to be optimistic,” Rudolph said. “It becomes overwhelming to try to change the course of one family’s life.”

Rudolph said case workers are encouraged to change jobs in the agency every three years, to keep them from getting burnt out or feeling overworked.

“It kind of breaks up the [burden] of doing investigations or doing ongoing case work. … It kind of gives you a new life when you change positions in an agency because it’s a fresh start,” Rudolph said.

Sarah Macovitz, a supervisor for Alta Behavioral Healthcare and outpatient social worker, said the pandemic shed new light on the importance of mental health. There are now more people in need of counseling services, but too few counselors to help them, she said.

“What happened was — in every agency — there was an overload of people [seeking services],” Macovitz said.

She said if social workers are not prepared while in school to handle the stress that comes with the job, it will be hard for them in the long-term.

Each social service specialty has its own stressors, she said, “but sometimes [social workers] move completely out of the field, and that may be an indicator of their preparedness.”

Macovitz said more social workers are now valuing their own mental and emotional needs over their careers.

“If you call any mental health agency right now and ask to be assigned a counselor, you’d probably get the notification that there’s a wait list,” she said.

She said Alta isn’t experiencing high turnover, but often its social workers and counselors are shuffled to other agencies to meet their needs.

Despite the job’s demands, Macovitz said she’s never considered leaving. But she stressed the importance of striking a work-life balance, she said.

“I tell [my employees] to eat, sleep and play because this field can be daunting at times, with some of the things we hear and see,” she said.

Rudolph said one-on-one and group counseling services are available for employees when working with crisis situations, like a client’s death.

“They [learn] how to recognize when you’re burned out because you might feel like you are irritable — but let’s look at “Why?” and what you can and can’t control,” she said. “We really encourage workers to support one another because they can relate to each other.”