Thanksgiving

So its that time of the year, in the facility where I work (with the homeless), where we all become very thankful and stay to serve meals to the residents. Many non-social workery people I know think this is so nice and sacrificial of me, and the staff to come in on our holiday to serve the residents.

I'm going to let all the non-social workery people... and all the social workery people who work in non-residential settings in on a secret. 95% percent of the people who work in residential settings, from the front line workers to the administrators, are their because they crave it, they are slight workaholics, love overtime (or if they are social work managers they love working 800,000 hours and not getting paid overtime for it), and there is something sort of exciting for the adernaline junkies that pick this setting.

So let's stop pretending that by spending Thanksgiving with my residents, who are schizophrenic and street homeless, I'm sacrificing anything. I want to be there. Heck, I have a ton of fun! We play bingo, and you've never seen how serious BINGO is until watch it in a facility where people are barely in touch with reality.

Hello and Welcome

So, I've thought a lot -on and off several times- about starting a social work blog of sorts. I grew up in the livejournal era of spilling your guts, only to move on to a job in the HIPAA liability world where basically the only thing any of my friends post on their personal facebooks or twitters or such are posts about movies, books, and nothing to with work.

But then I see these few media portrayals of socials workers, and I'm like "what is that?! I don't do that?!? Who in their right mind would behave that way?!" So I've decided to write about what actual socials workers do (a whole lot of things), and what they can and should know how to do. Then I will also probably write about the number of things I've been asked to do that are outside the scope of social work, but wouldn't compromise my license, and... are all as I like to say, "scrappy."

So if you also work in residential, or a hospital or nursing home perhaps, and want to learn how to de-bedbug your facility (and why this is a clinical and not just pest problem) stay tuned.

If, however, you only want to tell me about the 1 social worker  you met, who you felt was really bad, and didn't help you, etc, etc, etc... I don't actually care. I'm not going to defend them. Report them to their boss. We don't all know each other.