Social work where it matters
We run the only drop-in social worker service in Christchurch. That’s a big deal because when people are at their most desperate, most withdrawn, and most physically and mentally ill they often struggle badly to make and keep future appointments.
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But while our clients appreciate the accessibility and flexibility we offer, it can make for a very stressful working day for our staff.
Clients wanting to see a social worker can come to our reception and will be asked to give their name and birth date. If they are already in our system, the social worker will get a brief chance to find out a bit more about them from the notes before coming out to talk to them.
But 70 percent of the 1200 clients our social workers see each year are new to us, and so it’s difficult to know what the social worker will find when they close the interview room door and meet the client across the table.
They don’t know what problem is that they will be asked to help fix and they don’t know what state the client will be in. This makes it hard for our staff but we are happy to do this on-call support so we get help to those who need it most.
As with most of our other social services, our social workers take on some of the hardest cases in the city that many other places find too difficult.
We have five social workers, including a team leader, and they all are rostered to cover the drop-in social worker work, as well as running caseloads specialising in men’s night shelter, women’s night shelter and community social work.
We gathered our social work team together to talk about their work for this story and when asked about what it was like on the frontline, they said it was the aspect of having no clue what they would face in dropin interviews which was something very different at the Mission compared to pre-arranged interviews.
Many of our clients can be highly emotional and agitated because they have come to us at the end of a long road and they know we are their last resort and last hope.
When they meet our social worker, the interview may come at the end of many occasions of them having been turned down or rejected. Over and over they may have failed to understand what is happening and what is needed from them. They are often at their wits end.
That’s why some clients come into our interview rooms and immediately burst into tears. Some crawl under the desk, shaking, to hide from everything.
Some clients can be barely understood or not at all because they have taken drugs to escape life. Some clients haven’t eaten for days. Some clients have been badly beaten by abusive partners and sit there with their bruises and wounds.
Some clients are terrified because it is going to be dark in a few hours and they have nowhere to sleep. Some will be carrying their total possessions when they come to us at the Mission. Some clients are being scammed and ripped off by other people because they can’t read or write.
And some come in with multiple versions of these problems all at once. That is what we mean when we talk about seeing more complex cases among our clients.
The list goes on and on. Many of them have tried and failed to get help from government agencies and walking into the City Mission is the last hope to be heard and helped.
“It is the aspect of having no clue what you will face in drop-in interviews which is very different to pre-arranged interviews.”
But not all the odds are stacked against us. One big advantage we have is we have built a network of supporting services on our Hereford Street site which means we can act quickly and efficiently with really targeted help.
For example, our social workers can get distressed clients emergency food parcels from our foodbank, get them a bed in our emergency shelters, get them in-house medical help, including seeing our mental health nurse, link them to our addiction counsellors and services, link them to financial mentors, provide vouchers for emergency clothing and bedding from the op shop.
Sometimes our help is needed at the most basic level – when someone is struggling to read and write. The task of filling out forms correctly to get benefits is a nightmare and can cause a huge amount of frustration and anger. We run a learning hub that helps with these issues including teaching computer skills.
That’s all just from the offices and buildings around them on our site. It is our wrap-around services, all run out of our Hereford Street site that sets us apart from other more specialised organisations.
If we can’t help them immediately, we often know other organisations which may be better placed to support them so we can set up contacts for them.
As one of our social workers explains it, many other agencies are funded to help a specific problem, but if the client’s problem doesn’t fit exactly into those criteria, then the client is turned away.
At the City Mission, we are funded by our donors to help people right when they need help. That’s why we run a drop-in service. We put clients’ needs and situations first and our staff have the skills, connections and compassion to get the clients to a better place. We use our donor funding to make a real difference.