Social work can be so taxing in part because it so often means being on the front lines of overwhelmingly large problems that exist on a society-wide scale: substance abuse , mental illness, unemployment, poverty, and housing discrimination, to name a few.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, social work is one of thefastest growing fields in the U.S., though the number of social workers is still outpaced by the demand for their services in some places. The state of Texas had even resorted to lowering the education requirements for caseworkers—no longer requiring them to have college degrees—to meet this demand.
Judith Schagrin is the assistant director for children’s services for Baltimore County, Maryland. She oversees the county’s foster care and adoptions program, which includes the approval process for foster parents and making sure that children don’t linger in the foster-care system. I spoke with Schagrin about how she’s stayed motivated for more than 30 years in the same field, the challenges facing the foster-care system, and what families have stuck with her the most.
[For more of this story, written by Adrienne Green, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...ocial-worker/495533/]
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