This commentary is by Caleb Magoon, who owns Power Play Sports in Morrisville, and Waterbury Sports. He is also vice chair of the Lamoille County Planning Commission and president of the Morrisville Alliance for Culture and Commerce. These are his personal views and opinions and his alone.
[G]ov. Peter Shumlin has been working hard to convince the people of Vermont that the issues at the Department for Children and Families (DCF) are due to the rising opiate crisis. Anyone close to DCF knows that the real problems stem from poor management, top down leadership, and high employee turnover, exacerbating the effects of rising opiate use. If Vermonters want someone to blame the performance of DCF on, they need look no further than the administration’s handling of the crisis now coming to a head at this vital organization.
Most Vermonters can see the devastation the opiate crisis is causing in our state. Contrary to what our lawmakers would have you believe, it’s really the straw that broke the camel’s back at DFC, rather than the singular cause of the agency’s woes. It is but one factor in a perfect storm that has gutted the agency of many of the most experienced workers. High employee turnover is as much of a problem for DCF as the opiate crisis. According to data from a 2015 annual report, 41.54 percent of social workers have less than two years of experience and 58.21 percent have less than five years of experience. As in many challenging professions, experience in social work makes a huge difference in effectiveness. Statistics like these require us to question the reasons behind such debilitating turnover.
Social work is an immensely difficult job requiring considerable skill. Workers deal with very sensitive issues involving families and our complicated legal system, sometimes removing children from unsafe homes. Effective DCF social work requires an ability to appear calm, think rationally, and communicate effectively in volatile crisis situations. It requires the patience of a kindergarten teacher, the empathy of a hospice nurse, and the instincts of a police officer. Social workers must be able to write effectively and persuasively because any and all documentation is open to scrutiny from the court and others. Social workers also need to be tough; no matter what they do, someone is going to be angry about it. Experienced DCF social workers are worth their weight in gold.
So why are experienced DCF workers leaving in droves?
Two major reasons stand out: 1) the job produces a unique set of psychological stressors that negatively impact everything from physical health to interpersonal relationships; and 2) the leadership and culture within DCF have failed to provide a supportive, positive and affirming workplace where social workers feel valued. Faced with an increasing workload and stress burden in the context of a negative and unsupportive work environment, it’s no wonder employees are abandoning ship.
DCF social workers are constantly exposed to extreme human suffering, acts of cruelty, and threats to their own personal safety. As a result, DCF social workers are more vulnerable to a host of mental health challenges including post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), secondary traumatic stress, and moral injury.
PTSD can arise when social workers experience threats to their personal safety or the safety of those they care about. PTSD can also arise after a tragedy, such as the death of a child on the social worker’s caseload or the suicide of an adult client.
Secondary traumatic stress arises when individuals empathize deeply with children or parents who have suffered extreme trauma; something the social workers are required to document in detail on a daily basis.
DCF is far from perfect, and social workers have a veritable gold mine of ideas for how to make it better. Social workers’ biggest problem is that right now, no one is listening.
Finally, moral injury results when a social worker loses the ability to see him or herself as a good person because that individual has failed to prevent a death or serious injury of a client.
Though these kinds of traumatic events don’t always end up making the evening news, these are psychological hazards that nearly all social workers in Vermont are regularly exposed to.
The stress associated with the job can cause poor sleep, unhealthy eating patterns, substance abuse, chronic pain, gastrointestinal problems, depression, feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness, trouble concentrating, strained relationships, and many other problems. Eventually, untreated traumatic stress leads to impaired job performance and is a major cause of poor performance and staff turnover.
Despite the difficulty of the job, most social workers understand that the work they do is extremely important to the social good, and they are in it for the right reasons. Unfortunately the unavoidable psychological stress is compounded by a destructive and unsupportive management culture that devalues social workers’ ideas and opinions. Comments and suggestions from the ground level workers are not encouraged, not taken seriously, and often ridiculed. The result is a crushing blow to employee morale. Why would anyone want to do a dangerous and profoundly upsetting job when they don’t even feel respected by their own bosses? Making matters worse is what every social worker knows: When something terrible happens, the blame never rolls uphill.
The problem doesn’t stop with employee morale. Despite an individual social worker’s best efforts, eventually the broader agency culture negatively impacts how social workers interact with their clients. How can they provide empathy for the most difficult and aggressive clients when their own supervision is more focused on policy requirements than the myriad of moral dilemmas and painful choices social workers face each day? How can we ask them to truly listen to their clients’ concerns when their own concerns fall on deaf ears? Can we really expect social workers to engage families in participatory decision-making within an agency culture that prioritizes top-down decision-making and values obedience over critical thinking?
After last year’s highly publicized child fatalities, our Legislature took action to reduce the likelihood of childhood deaths. Unfortunately, neither the destructive agency culture nor the overworked and psychologically stressed workforce was addressed. Though the legislation prodded some important changes, it failed to address the root causes of DCF’s troubles. Gov. Shumlin recently pressed for the hiring of over two dozen new positions. This is a step in the right direction, assuming DCF can recruit and retain skilled professionals to fill these jobs. However, throwing money at DCF simply will not solve the problems now thoroughly woven into the fabric of the organization.
Throwing fresh bodies into the battle won’t keep kids safe.
With an agency in crisis and a mounting opiate issue multiplying the problem, what can possibly be done? The enormity of the challenge facing DCF dictates that leaders with crisis management skills are needed. Top leaders at DCF either need to address their inadequacies or be replaced by creative thinkers with fresh ideas. How do you change the culture, attitude and practices of an organization? Not easily. A sea change in culture driven by new leadership is the fastest, though possibly messiest way to achieve this goal.
At an absolute minimum, leadership and employees need to have a facilitated conversation to change the perception amongst front-line social workers that they are undervalued and their input is unheard. These important employees must feel valued. Social workers need and want to feel that their voices matter, and that their ideas are seen as valued avenues for further agency growth. DCF is far from perfect, and social workers have a veritable gold mine of ideas for how to make it better. Social workers’ biggest problem is that right now, no one is listening.
DCF social workers also need better support from the agency on a number of levels. Social workers need to be encouraged to openly discuss the impacts of traumatic stress, and trauma-informed treatment must be readily available, if not required. It should be required when a worker experiences a significant trauma, just as it is in many police departments when an officer is involved in a shooting. There should also be policies and practices put in place to assign social workers that are deeply distressed temporary and/or alternative work assignments. For example, an investigative social worker experiencing a high level of traumatic stress might benefit from time spent documenting or screening calls to the child protection hotline, or compiling data for an annual report.
What we need overall is to find ways to retain our social workers. Changes must be made to encourage healthier, happier workers. Social workers need to be helped to cope with the traumatic stresses of the job. The issues with the DCF organizational culture must be addressed and changed to insure that employees feel valued. Such investments will save us money in the long run, both in terms of health services for those employees, and in retaining their services for the long run. Let’s start treating the challenge at DCF for what it is: An agency in crisis in need of big structural changes, not just quick fixes.
