Social Workers’ One-Day Sickout

Re “Social Workers Call In Sick to Protest Caseload,” March 9:

Department of Children and Family Services management continues to trivialize social worker concerns and illnesses as bargaining strategy, again claiming that worker illnesses only have the potential to harm children. The reality is, one day’s absence to rest and recuperate from the stress and strain of the job, management abuses, including mandatory overtime, lack of management support, disrespect for our contract, our own families and communities we live in and serve, and constant investigation and suspicion threatening workers and their families, is nothing. Of any 200-hour-plus month, workers are lucky if they are able to spend a total of 10 hours with the kids they serve. DCFS management chants “child safety,” reducing the real social worker commitment to children to a political sound bite.

We’ve been unable to discover any real changes that DCFS management has initiated to make it easier, and more likely, for workers to have quality visits with the minors and families they serve, in the last five years. Any numerical reduction in caseloads is more than negated by all the additional paperwork and procedures involved in each case, much of which far exceeds state regulations.

As for bargaining strategy, that has not even begun. Having contained their frustrations in the hope of a level of management integrity, workers are taking control of their profession in the interest of the children and families they serve. They realize that they cannot depend on management to restore true commitment to child safety in the community.

TIM FARRELL

Chief Grievance Officer

SEIU Local 535

Los Angeles