Summary Of The Story Of Welfare Reform And The Human Services By Mimi Abramovitz

In her article “The Largely Untold Story of Welfare Reform and the Human Services,” Mimi Abramovitz discusses a study done on workers or numerous welfare agencies in New York. She describes several issues experienced by many social workers that the agencies reported following the social welfare reform, including frustrations at having to take time from clinical work with their clients to explain the new welfare rules and to focus on work related issues, their decreased time with clients due to the excessive paperwork and sped up service provisions, and a perceived loss of control over their work as a result of client loss, insufficient time, and lacks in access to information and government resources. Furthermore, many social workers felt

It is important for me to understand how the welfare system works and what it entails for my work with my clients. Although I have not yet had to interact with the welfare system on anyone’s behalf, it is more than likely I will have to in the future. Understanding what is involved in doing that is important before taking that on. Furthermore, I believe that having the expectations of what interacting with this system entails, such as a large amount of paperwork, decreased time for clinical work, and probable confidentiality related ethical dilemmas, could decrease discouragement, since the worker would understand what is involved in undertaking such a task, and s/he would understand that they are not alone in facing these

Feelings of job dissatisfaction and burnout are not exclusive to social workers involved with the welfare system; in our profession, it is an issue that can be faced in any area, including clinical practice. It is easy to get stuck in feelings that one is not making progress with a certain client and feel demoralized as a result. The three concepts focused on in this article to avoid burnout when interacting with the welfare system can also be applied to clinical work. For instance, one can remind oneself that they are needed by the client. Even if the worker does not feel like s/he is being productive, the client keeps seeing him/her, which means that the client still feels s/he needs the help of the worker. An additional point to focus on is that the worker can make a difference to the client. Lastly, it is very beneficial to maintain a sense of accomplishment. It is important for the worker to remember that s/he has accomplished things with that client and with other before him/her. In my own field work, I have been working with a certain client with numerous different issues. At one point, I began to feel discouraged because I believed there was so much this client needed accomplished, and I felt we were making little to no progress together; that I was not being