Vantaggi
the team is amazing, I have made friends for life at that place and the support overall from other staff is amazing. It is a great community. the work itself is great as well for someone how values tangible results. helps you understand our resettlement process and see how truly broken it is. we are bringing people into poverty, on food stamps, medicaid, etc and I fear many will take generations to get out of poverty. but this is the government, and lack of funding by them. all we can do is use what they give and try our best. If i was to do it over I would still apply and work there for a year, but no more unless you can switch positions. it is definitely worth it for a period if you enjoy fast paced, problem solving, and slightly repetitive work.
Svantaggi
management is never prepared for the number of clients we have. Headquarters assigns unnecessary trainings and seems to prefer to hire outside the company and not value moving their own employees as much. There was very little opportunity for growth unless you happened to be in a department with new funding and opening positions. high turnover rate and work is simply passed on to those who stay. The emotional trauma is real and the preparation for healthy work-life balance and boundaries is essentially non-existent. also, the nature of being a caseworker means you either sacrifice your work-life balance or you build boundaries and your clients will probably directly suffer and it will feel like you are responsible, sometimes other staff will blame you and tell you to resolve issues for clients simply since they expect a caseworker to do anything that is not required of another team member. even if it is not within your job description, and some may resent you, especially after you have been there for 6 months and start to realize you cannot keep up with the workload.