Thursday, February 28, 2008

I'm fucking clueless and helpless.

I'm tired.

I have days where I'm completely at loss as to why I'm doing my job. Namely, it's because I feel, at times, that what I'm doing is actually counterproductive for my clients and their potential of being able to live independently.

I do what I can for them. I do things that they can't do themselves. That can range from finding a dentist to finding an attorney who will help with their estate planning. I mostly do these things because my client can't speak English. They can't speak English for various reasons. (If you start lecturing me about how those damn immigrants should all speak English fluently, don't even speak to me, because I will bite your head off.) Their language barrier is debilitating for them, and hinder them from doing some (complicated) everyday things. They start relying on me. They start really really needing me. And at a certain point, I start questioning. I question, what if I'm not here? What if someone like me (by me, I mean someone doing my job) can't provide services to them? What then? How are they going to survive? What are they going to do?

Essentially, the main goal for all social workers is to work with the client until they are self sufficient. That's the ideal, but that's if we're in Utopia. Sadly, clients of mine have been clients for such a long period of time. So, what I do for them, the services I provide for them... is it actually helping them? Or is it making my clients into people who can't survive on their own? But can they even do that in the first place? What if? What fucking if?

I question myself with shit like this from time to time and it sometimes makes me really sad and frustrated because I don't know what to do to make things better. I don't know what I could do for the best interest of the client.

I hate not knowing.

One other thing that I absolutely hate about my job is when things get fucked up because I just didn't know about something. Something changed with the law, or policy, or I just didn't plain learn about it. But that's not an excuse, so suddenly my client's life is turned upside down.

I just wanted to vent about how, sometimes, there are situations where I would arrange certain things for a client and find out that it doesn't work, so it becomes really difficult for the client.

Le sigh.

I should go to bed. I should also learn not to take my work with me. Figuratively speaking.

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