Daphney Ivory

St Petersburg College

May, 1, 2016

There is an influx of case mangers that are quitting because of unbalanced workloads and unfair pay scales causing a domino effect in the agency and leaving the case mangers that are left behind caring for double loads of a work load that is already virtually impossible to balance in a 40 hour work week. How are the various case management agencies going to curtail this problem?

Target Customer

Case Managers that serve customers such as parents, both men and women that are in jeopardy of losing their children due to a situation involving the children. Children that have become wards of the state because their parents have lost all rights to them or children that are in the foster care system due to their parents being deceased or unable to care for them, and also children in the state system due to a relative caring for their well-being.

Extensive caseloads and exorbitant workloads in numerous jurisdictions make it troublesome for child welfare laborers to serve families adequately. The normal caseload for child welfare laborers regularly surpasses prescribed levels, in some cases by two times or more.

Pain Point

There are many children in the system that have serious issues that warrant a visit from a case manager up to three times a week every month or more. The problem is there are not enough case managers to handle the case load. The reason being is because the pay scale does not fit the amount of work the case manager has to do in a 40 hour work week. There are many times that case manager’s need to see some children more than once or twice a week and there are several children that need to be seen. It’s virtually impossible for a case manager to get to all of it clients in the time frame allotted by the state and agencies funding those programs that the case managers work for. This can cause a laps in funding or canceling of programs that benefit the agency that the case manager works for.

The unpredictability of cases requiring concentrated intercession, and authoritative necessities, further adds to a case manager's workload. Reasonable caseloads and workloads can have a genuine effect in a specialist's capacity to invest satisfactory energy with youngsters and families, enhance staff maintenance, and at last positively affect results for children and families. (cildwelfare.gov, 2016) 

Strategic Solution

Some provisions positively related to worker retention are flexible employment conditions (such as flex-time schedules), providing opportunities for professional development, and providing automobile allowances can help reduce worker turnover and to reduce stress amongst case managers. (childwelfare.gov, 2016)  

Decreasing and overseeing caseloads and workloads are not straightforward tasks for child welfare directors. Organizations face various difficulties, including an organizational spending plan, emergencies and contracting and stops, paying attention to specialist turnover, finding qualified candidates for open positions, executing time-escalated best practices, and dealing with numerous changes at the same time. Indeed, even the essential determination of what caseloads and workloads as of now are and what they ought to be can be prickly.

 Demographic Table

Interview Table

ARE YOU SICK OF YOUR CASE LOAD BURNOUT?

Sponsoring agencies have formed a strategic committee to evaluate the caseloads and pay scales of case managers and come up with a bargaining pay that is fair to the case manager and balances the work load to fit the pay scale of case managers.

Call Betheny Roberts for more information (1-888-777-9311)

Lisa Wu believes that this will help form an alliance between the committee and case managers.

Children and Families Social Network calls to change the case manager overload

PRESS RELEASE

ST PETERSBURG (May 30, 2016)

High caseworker turnover can be related to placement disruption for children so the Children and Families Social Network is going to promote supporting worker retention and come up with a solution to have flexible working conditions by providing opportunities including professional development and training.

Strategic Solution Implementation

States are addressing these challenges of caseloads and successfully implementing a variety of strategies to make caseloads and workloads more manageable. Methods include adding and retaining staff to refining worker effectiveness to executing system improvements. (childwelfare.gov, 2016)        

Several state legislatures have mandated State and local jurisdictions to access workload issues, meet identified standards, implement specific strategies such as hiring additional staff, and report on progress. (childwelfare.gov, 2016)

Goals

Budget Table

Takeaways and Learning Experience

Selling and Negotiating go hand in hand and must be done with expertise and skills. Selling your ideas to a customer whether it be in retail, or in social work can be very challenging. You must have the ability to build a prospect base, plan and implement strategies that will influence your potential customer and to be able to expand your consumer base. With case management, not only is it beneficial to please the case manager due to overloaded cases, but it is vital for clients as well.  Sometimes their lives depend on a case manager and that case manager must be able to balance their case load and their own lives. Hopefully with the strategies that have been put into place the state can come up with resolutions to the problem of case manager overload by providing them with professional development and trainings.

References

Childwelfare.(2016). Retrieved April 18, 2016 from https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/case_work_management.pdf

Childsworld. (2016). Retrieved April 18, 2016 from http://www.childsworld.ca.gov/res/pdf/PlacementStability.pdf

Payscale (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2016 from http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Case_Manager/Salary