Samantha explained her situation: she had four children at home, was pregnant with twins, and her husband had a low-paying job as a truck driver.
“And the air conditioning on the van is broken. It gets so unbearably hot back there for the kids – you know what I mean.”
The woman was very articulate and knew how to describe her family’s situation, and her husband seemed to be doing his best to support his family.
Samantha had contacted a local nonprofit to help those in financial need. First of all, she needed help with the rent and utilities.
I was at the meeting, and my first thought was that helping with the rent and utilities was a good idea. Air conditioning, on the other hand, seemed to be a luxury. My own family’s car air conditioning at that time wasn’t working properly either. We weren’t asking anyone for help.
The other person at our meeting was Wendy, one of our church’s ministers to the poor. She said that she would take all of this information back to the committee and see what they said.
I described the scene to someone else and was told, “She knows how to work the system.” That seemed to be a valid insight.
In the end, the charity organization decided to help with a month’s rent and utilities. But they stopped with the air conditioning.
Know When to Say No
A social worker’s job in cases like these is similar: help out, but maintain the nerve to say no.
I scanned Quora for insights into the frustrations and rewards of social workers. Here is a reply of Laura Zimmerman, LCSW, who responded to the question of whether there was a time when a social worker ever became disgusted and quit on the job:
“In my former work with the Department of Child Services, there were days when I decided to quit on the spot….but then thought better of it and ended up working there for 10.5 years. Like any job, working in social work can be incredibly frustrating but it’s never dull and there are often small (or large!) victories that make all the hard work worth it.”
Die in the Chair
And to the same question, Jonathan Schnapp, a psychotherapist, answers:
“I’ve never heard of anyone retiring for that reason. In fact, when it comes to psychotherapy, many therapists never retire. There is an expression, ‘die in the chair,’ because many literally work until they die….
“How do they deal with it?” the psychotherapist asks.
“They genuinely care about and love the people they work with. What a joy it is to connect and be of service to people you care about. This kind of reward never stops being meaningful.
“The focus is never on those who’ve caused the pain, it’s on those that they are helping.”
Dysfunctional system
Jonathan adds that for social workers in contact with the public, there is a lot more potential for burnout. He says that the difficulty is “often about dealing with the external system around the client which is very much dysfunctional, and out of the control of both client and social worker.”
It’s an imperfect system, but my hat is off to compassionate social workers.