Social workers often deal with trauma. What happens when it gets to be too much?

Rodrigo Torrejon | NorthJersey

Show Caption Hide Caption What to do if you or a loved one is at risk of suicide What to do if you or a loved one is at risk of suicide. Source: National Institute of Mental Health.

New Jersey's social workers help people with some of the worst situations, on some of their worst days.

Maybe none more so than those in child protective services, who see families ripped apart by circumstances such as drugs and domestic violence. But what happens when it gets to be too much for the helpers?

While resources exist for over-stressed and overwhelmed child protective service workers, they are not always readily available, experts say. In the best of circumstances, peer-to-peer counseling and hotlines are provided, offering help from people who know best the difficulties of the job.

But the onus to seek help seems to fall on the social workers themselves, who are told to emphasize "self-care" and to reach out. With heavy workloads and frequent crises to deal with, that is often not a possibility.

As for services, "I think they’re lacking," said Mindy Kolczynski, who worked as a casework supervisor at the Division of Child Protection and Permanency for 34 years. "I think that they’re more difficult to access for the caseworkers that are busy out in the field. All the higher-level people get the emails about what’s available. The workers don’t."

Paramus suicide

On Monday, Doreen Kane, a longtime casework supervisor at the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in Paramus, shot herself in the office where she worked. She was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead shortly after.

Kane's death shocked her co-workers and friends and, although it's impossible to say why she took her own life, it highlighted the stress that child protective service workers contend with.

The state provides Department of Children and Families' approximately 6,600 employees with two services to vie with day-to-day stress, said Jason Butkowski, a spokesman for the department.

"These services are typically deployed to offices whenever staff experiences distress due to a serious incident such as an event that involves a child or family in our care or injury or death of a colleague," Butkowski said. "Support services can also be accessed individually by any staff at their own discretion for assistance with personal issues."

Employees can call the hotline Worker 2 Worker program, where employees can receive counseling from their peers, fellow DCF workers. Through the Civil Service Commission’s Employee Advisory Service, employees and their families can flag the stress brought on through the job and be referred to further counseling, if needed.

In both cases, the services are upon request.

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"This week, Worker 2 Worker, the Employee Advisory Service, and the Traumatic Loss Coalition were mobilized immediately and were on-site to support staff in the Bergen Central office and surrounding offices that were experiencing distress due to the sudden death of their colleague. Support has and will continue as needed," said Butowski.

The Traumatic Loss Coalition is a network of services provided by Rutgers UBHC that support people who work with school-aged children after a tragedy.

"Certainly when there’s a tragedy or something that occurs, the offices are very quick to bring in a trauma coalition or a therapist to come by," Dawn M. Konrady, director of Stockton University's Child Welfare Education Institute, said. "There might be a group session that a manager sets up. In terms of the agencies throughout the state, each office handles things a little bit differently."

Counseling and therapy is often needed because child protective service work can be traumatic, said Jeffrey C. Singer, former New Jersey Psychological Association president. When employees are repeatedly exposed to difficult situations, trauma and compassion fatigue can set in.

Kane, who worked at the division as far back as 2010, saw difficult cases firsthand. Sometimes the cases ended well for the children. Other times things got worse.

"In child protection, you’re witnessing situations of abuse and neglect and danger. Where helpless children may not be able to advocate effectively for themselves," said Janie Feldman, a psychologist in New Jersey for more than 25 years. "And sometimes things don’t go in the best way possible for a child. A parent gets a second chance. A parent lies to the court. Grandma doesn't want to take care of the child anymore."

In New Jersey, there are more than 20,000 licensed social workers and as many as 100,000 social workers with or without licenses, said Jennifer Thompson, executive director of the National Association of Social workers. These workers usually have to look to themselves or their colleagues to recognize the signs of stress.

"When people have careers that incorporate emotional stress it’s all the more important to find ways to manage it," said Jill Harkavy-Friedman, vice president of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. "It’s part of the job, so it’s very important to find ways to manage that stress. Sometimes if you end up in the throes of a mental health condition it’s harder to manage that stress.”

The National Association for Social Workers connects workers to mental health and counseling resources they may be lacking and continues education to inform workers as to where to turn for help, Thompson said. The association offers private counseling sessions between private practitioners of social work, who would know best each other's challenges. Similar sessions for child protective service workers could be made available, she said

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"We’re very much concerned for the health and well-being of the individuals doing the helping," said Thompson. " We're the people that help the helpers. We do a lot of talk about the need to be focused and mindful of taking care of themselves."

Recognizing that need in co-workers is paramount, Feldman said. Because often times the office culture focuses more on the bottom-line and the workers themselves don't pick up some of the signs, Kolczynski said.

"How do we save ourselves from life?" said Kolczynski. "If the culture of the office is the numbers and is missing cues, the workers are going to be at high risk of damage. Because they can't recognize it themselves."

Email: torrejon@northjersey.com



