Caseworkers face numerous challenges in their work, and child-welfare departments see high rates of burnout and turnover. Nationwide, most caseworkers don’t stay on the job more than two years. In January last year, Westword explored the child-welfare workforce in Colorado in a feature story, finding that workers often face overwhelming workloads and secondary trauma from home visits and difficult cases.
Some of the caseworkers who shared their stories with Westword described the psychological effects of dealing with children who died, death threats from abusive parents, and the immense pressure of managing unreasonable caseloads while regularly making life-or-death decisions.
At the time of the story, a former caseworker named Rebecca Meyers had been working with the Colorado chapter of the National Association of Social Workers to hold focus groups and collect stories from caseworkers across Colorado’s 64 counties to find their greatest needs.
Meyers is now a lobbyist and has been instrumental in getting the task force bill introduced in the legislature. She says that the proposed task force would focus on developing “resiliency programs,” which aim to support caseworkers dealing with secondary trauma as a result of their job. The group would comprise a mixture of law enforcement personnel, state lawmakers, university researchers, human-services officials and caseworkers from across the state.
Read the complete story by Chris Walker here
Title Photo by Brian Stauffer
See the proposed bill in the attachments
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