The 13 Hour Day

Today I worked for 13 hours, but the crazy thing is it doesn’t feel as exhausting as I think a 13 hour day sounds. But it was a jam-packed day, so a quick recap of my day:

• court review hearing on an abandoned baby. Fortunately, they realize that I will be quick and put us in first and I am only there for an hour – not the usual 3 hours.
• I had planned a home visit near the court house, but it is canceled due to a relative being gravely ill. Head back to the office.
• Read emails and check in a co-worker who is doing homestudies on some of relative placements.
• Call parent with phone interpreter to set up final psych eval appointment with parenting observation component. Call psychologist to confirm.
• Get call from a TANF social worker requesting info about a mom who is applying for benefits and saying her son is with her. He is not, but taking this call reminds me…
• …to fax substance abuse eval to TANF worker on another case that I didn’t get to yesterday.
• Chat with unit members about a colleague leaving, a new worker in the unit, and the overall status of the unit (very important!)
• Try calling client, but phone “temporarily out of service” which I now know means that they are out of minutes.
• Quick lunch with a colleague. (Whole Foods has the best salad bar! So expensive, yet so yummy!)
• Drive across town to go to a seminar about evidenced based practices for parents involved in child welfare. I try not to get offended by the obvious digs at social workers.
• Drive to do home visit, which takes me more than an hour and a half to get there! Grrr. This is with my shaken baby and her baby brother. They look cute and are progressing, but she still has so many developmental issues. Foster parents are great, and a little chatty.
• Drive an hour to do another home visit/meeting – stupid rush hour traffic and not transferring cases even when everyone moves out of region. This is the second referral that has come in the last 2 months on three little kids with their parents that got them back in the summer. After lots of discussions yesterday, it my opinion (and, really, decision) that we didn’t need to move the kids immediately. The parents had missed another doctor’s appointment and haven’t been taking the appointments seriously enough. However, they have been doing well in lots of other realms – drug treatment, UAs, working with in-home providers. A bunch of us are there, and I let them know that I had to convince others yesterday not to move the kids, but if they miss another appointment, we will have to. I try to be clear and straightforward, so they understand the gravity of the situation; yet, I also want to be supportive and identify strengths, because this family does have some. (Also, I have to deal with some posturing from a worker from the region that the family is in who insinuates that I am not doing my job and is frankly, a bit old-fashioned. Overall, I think I handle it well, but I wonder if he (or someone else) contacts my supervisor to check in about all of this).
• Drive the 45 minutes home – fortunately there is no longer traffic – and arrive just after 9 pm and around 140 total miles.

Coworkers: To Hang or Not to Hang

So I have been thinking and trying to figure out if coworkers are people that I want to be socializing with outside of work. Historically, I have done this minimally. I have always wanted to keep my professional and personal lives very separate and a quick way of doing this has been to not hang out with colleagues outside of work. I have believed that this has assisted me in trying to leave work at work and not be worrying about it all the time.

But, I have been wondering if this is the best course of action. Teacher friends of mine are very close with their colleagues. And this weekend I was visiting with a friend who lives out of town but is also a social worker for the state and I met her friend and colleague. Meeting her, it was like we had an instant connection because we both were social workers. We talked shop a little bit, but there was just a basic understanding with each other that (I assume) is based on the fact that we do the same thing professionally.

So am I missing out on important relationships and connections because of my strict boundaries? I am going to have to mull this over…