Dear Alison,

I hope you don’t mind me calling you Alison…you are such a breath of fresh air I feel like I know you personally. I am so pleased that more money is being spent on education and services for those in need. Your quick and direct action in that direction is a valuable and admirable first step toward making our province a better place to live for all.

However, there is a “but”. It’s a big “but” and a personal “but” that could be expressed by many first line workers across the broad scope of social services. This funding is set up to help those in need at the expense of the first contact workers that administer that help. What good is this extra funding if it must go toward the training of new employees, administration, and reorganization?

Picture a young woman who works for an agency that depends on government funding to run its programs. She and her peers have recently been told that their nominal calculations have to be at 100% to prove that they are earning their wage, that they aren’t wasting the taxpayers’ money.

 Good thought, but there are many duties that are disallowed in the calculation of these figures so as caseloads increase to impossible, excellent case workers with valuable experience and education are being forced to leave jobs that they love and clients that depend on them. They are burned out, can’t cope with the internal pressure, but more importantly, they no longer have time to give their clients appropriate service so leaving the position becomes a moral decision as well.

Now on the personal level, last week my daughter, one such caseworker, was diagnosed with a severe case of strep throat. She was extremely ill and spent the past week unable to swallow or eat. She was seen by a doctor and was subsequently sent to the urgent care centre in our community to receive intravenous antibiotics and steroids to eliminate the rampant infection and swelling in her throat. She was encouraged by her supervisors to take time to recover, to not overdo and to not return to work until she was well.

But these same supervisors have reiterated that if her nominal figures are below 100% in any given month, a letter of reprimand will be placed in her file (as would happen to anyone whose figures did not meet the standard for whatever reason.) She covered her time off as best she could, took a personal day, then used up vacation days to cover her absence. However, this has no bearing on the fact that the organization still expects a 100% outcome. If this is not reached, a threat to end employment has been made.

Today she is recovering, still cannot swallow and the strong antibiotics she must take are making her nauseous but she’s back at work because she has to be. There are people that depend on her and she doesn’t want to lose her job. 

So Alison, is this the way this initiative is intended to play out? I can’t believe the intention is to create a whole new group of victims among the first contact caseworkers, so maybe it’s time the method of assessing work hours is evaluated and more importantly, monitored, especially concerning work done in private agencies. Thank you for listening.

Yours respectfully,
A hopeful but frustrated Albertan