Caretaker Interview

The individual I will be interviewing is Jennifer Morales. She has been working at a nonprofit organization as a caseworker for the past 5 years. As part of her caseload she has been working with young kids from age 6 through 18. Jennifer loves working with the young kids as part of her job and she also admitted that sometimes the workload and dealing with crisis can become overwhelming as they can occur at any time day or night. Some of the crisis Jennifer deals with requires her to visit the clients at their homes and if some of the clients are arrested, then Jennifer is required to appear at the court for further instruction from the judge. Throughout the week Jennifer’s daily job duties requires her to complete a routine visit, and a checkups on each client with their families about their child progress and issues for that week.

Then there are other cases which take more effort on my part if one of my clients ran away from home, get into a fight, got arrested, or have been abused by one of the family member. Most of these situations can become emotional for Jennifer as she has worked very hard with her clients for week, months, years, and then just in one day it can turn to the worse. This is due to new crises which a client is involved in or funding have been pulled for that client. When Jennifer was asked, if she has ever experienced burnout as part of her job, she replied yes. She also mentioned that her job has its ups and downs, but when dealing with clients who are in crisis can become very overwhelming and she can be burnout. In the current economic situation, most of Jennifer’s clients are forces to terminate their service with her because the government will no longer be able to pay for these sections and all her hard work goes to waste.

Jennifer has been experiencing stage 3 of burnout, which is frustration. “Frustration clearly indicates that the worker is in trouble. The worker starts questioning the effectiveness, value, and impact of his or her efforts in the face of ever-mounting obstacles.” (Cavaiola, A. A., & Colford, J. E. 2011) Types of workloads Jennifer is faced with on a daily bases can sometime become a challenge because most of her cases do not end well and it can get the best of her emotions. In most cases Jennifer feels as if she could have done something different to avoid the crises which get her clients in trouble with the law and in some cases most of her clients are forces to terminate the counseling which lead her client back to their old habits. Some of the strategies Jennifer use to avoid further frustration, and stress is 1) Keep home and work separate and never bring stress of home to work and stress from work to home. 2) Spend more quality time with family and relaxation. 3) Seek assistance from management when needed, so stress is not bottles up.

Burnout is defined as “concept of patients who were “burned out” physically, emotionally, spiritually, interpersonally,