Career Contemplation

I have a dilemma.  It’s not really a dilemma, but it is to me.  I don’t know what I want to do.

I did my practicum with MCFD.  It was a good practicum, I liked my co-workers and was liked in return.  They had nothing bad to say about me.  All things you want in a practicum or any employment opportunity.  However, I remain unsure that child protection is something I want to do.  Now I am looking for work and have two MCFD jobs where I have made or will make the short list and have a good chance of getting on.  But I remain unsure if I want them.  I have a lot of reasons, I am just not sure they add up to enough. 

Reason 1.  I love volunteering.  In many ways, this is reasons 2, 3 and maybe 4 as well.  I need to connect with my community, since I am planning to stay here long term.  I want to get re-involved with Girl Guides and even sent the email in last night to see how I could volunteer.  I also need to make my own friends in the community.  Nick’s friends are great and we all get along, but they are Nick’s friends and I want my own.  I have always struggled with making friends, and volunteering has provided many of my closest friends.  The problem is that I see Girl Guides and MCFD as a conflict.  It is technically not, and many people at MCFD are involved in children’s lives outside of work.  I also know that work should not dictate how I live my life (although MCFD does ask certain things, which I totally understand).  My problem is that I don’t think parents can easily separate Jenna the Child Protection Worker from Jenna the Guide leader.  I think that some parents might pull their child from my unit, and there is not a lot of other options in a small community.  I think that parents will think that I am always judging them.  I don’t think people understand that every adult in this province is legally obligated to report child abuse.  I don’t want the girls to suffer because of my career choice.  The other problem I see is when a child in my unit becomes involved with the ministry.  Obviously she cannot fall on my caseload, but does it cause extra stress on the family that MCFD is in their lives in many ways.  What if I join a unit and there is a child already involved with MCFD.  I have talked to many people about this, and wrote it up as an ethical dilemma as part of my practicum.  I have had a discussion with my friends on Facebook about it.  I have had a discussion with one of my team leaders at MCFD.  My social work friends say that it is not a problem at all.  My friends that are parents (and not social workers) say that it comes down to my ability to separate my job from my volunteer.  I think it doesn’t matter if I am able to, it comes down to what parents are able to do.  My Team Leader told me that she originally tried to stay on volunteering but found that she felt it was a conflict in the end and had to stop her volunteer activities to keep her career.  She is the only person that has seen where I am coming from on this.  Nick tries to understand, but he doesn’t see the conflict I feel.  I think I have decided that I cannot work for MCFD and volunteer in the community.   This is a personal choice, or problem or whatever it is, but I just feel uncomfortable doing both.  Without volunteering in the community, I don’t know where else I am going to meet people and make new friends.  MCFD gained a reputation as baby snatchers (they have changed their practices now but reputations tend to remain) and I feel that people are not going to want to be friends with someone that can take their child at any time.  I know a friend of mine thinks that I judge her parenting and is just waiting for me to betray her.  She openly told me this.  I can only imagine how other parents feel about MCFD involvement in their lives.  And it is just that, I will always be MCFD.  I know co-workers at MCFD told me that their extended family always tell their kids (joking or not) that they have to behave when their aunt is there because she can take them away at any time.  I am not sure I want to start my time in the community “hated” by parents.

Reason 2 (or is it 5?).  The best part about social work, is working with people.  MCFD doesn’t provide any direct services to people – they use community agencies to provide services.  It is community agencies that work with the parents to improve their skills, work with children to gain a routine.  The role of an MCFD social worker is to ensure the child is safe and refer to community agencies.  We interview children but do not become a part of their lives in any way.  I LOVED working at the house in Kamloops because I was working directly with the people.  Yes, there were chores and things I didn’t like so much, but I loved taking the people to their activities and being a part of their lives.  When I interviewed for that Team Lead position for adults with disabilities, I kept thinking to myself, I don’t want to be the team leader, I want to be the community inclusion worker.  I guess I want to feel like I am making a difference in someone’s life, and I want to feel important.  I fear that with MCFD, I will feel more defeated than important.  Yes, I know that is a very selfish answer. 

As part of this reason, I am pretty sure I will be offered a casual position with the Emergency Shelter.  They basically told me I had it as long as my references checked out.  This would start as casual, and involve graveyard shifts. They hinted that there may be positions available in the near future though.  I started in Kamloops as casual and had a position before I finished my training hours.  This job works directly with the population it serves.  Meals are prepared for the people, beds are provided.  Workers get to know the individuals and what works for them.  MCFD workers have such a heavy caseload that they never get to spend the time getting to know the people they are helping.  In this way, taking the Shelter job and seeing where it goes appeals to me a lot more.  But I have also heard that some people get only a shift a month working there, and that is not going to work for me at all.  In our discussion yesterday, it came up that people who got on at MCFD found working at the shelter afterwards to be a conflict and had to quit the shelter.  The Shelter offers lots of trainings to their staff, many of which can be applied to many areas of life, such as Suicide Prevention, Mental Health First Aid etc.  MCFD obviously has a lot of training too, but it is less transferable in my opinion.  However, I have heard that people who have worked at MCFD (and even just done their practicum there) are highly employable because the training at MCFD is so good.

There are of course, reasons that MCFD is a better choice.  Both of the current positions offer benefits and vacation (one job pays both out as it is only part time).  The Ministry is one of the highest paying jobs in social work.  I know that I could stay for many years and am not going to lose my job because funding gets cut or something dumb.  The Ministry can always use more employees, but there has been a hiring freeze in the part.  Nick likes the Ministry because it is stable and safer.  He worries about me working with homeless and addicts.  He thinks I will become too attached and get hurt if they relapse.  He has a point, but I think social workers get hurt in any job.  You can become too attached to a client at MCFD as well.  It’s part of being a social worker to find out your boundaries and enforce them.

I am still working towards my FASD Support Worker Diploma.  A better paying job will help me pay that tuition easier than a casual job.  If I am working full time and doing a course, I might not have time for volunteering anyways.  I have signed up to take a course starting at the end of September and plan on taking on in the spring semester as well.  The ministry is typically a two year commitment (unless you don’t pass your probation), which gets me much further in my schooling.  But I had kind of decided to forego the “good job” in order to make friends.

I know that I do not have any of these jobs yet.   But I just don’t feel like I will be happy at the ministry.  In my practicum, I came home tired every night and half the week didn’t want to go to work.  I know that the student role and the employee role are different and I will have more to do.  I will have my own caseload and get to make decisions instead of doing paper work for other people.  And if I get the job where doing paperwork for other people is my role, at least I know ahead of time what that entails!

I cried when talking to Nick about what to do earlier today. I don’t think it was a “the ministry will make me cry” cry but more that the ministry might take away other chances to make friends and I am lonely cry.  I am not that lonely, I don’t do people well at the best of times, but this week I am feeling lonely and I want something to do that forces me out of the house.  I know a job will help with that as well but I just feel like I need my own life and don’t know the best way to go about finding it.  I know that soon Nick’s fall activities will start and he will be home less often again.  I want to have things to do as well!

I guess I know I need to go ahead with the process for both MCFD jobs, and see what happens with the shelter as well.  I just feel so conflicted about getting an MCFD job, whereas I think that any other social work job would not cause the same torment inside me.  I have never really been in a situation where I could pick and choose what jobs I got (and I am not there yet, but there is a lot of thought about it!).  I don’t know what my dream job might be.  I don’t know what I want to do with this social work degree, but I know it was the right degree for me.  I haven’t said it in a while, but I felt like I fit in for the first time in my life when I entered the BSW program.  I found people who think the same way, who feel the same way.  Part of me wants to explore more social work options – that is another reason why the shelter is appealing right now – it is something new that I get to try.  A new population with things I have never experienced.  But can a girl who has been sober her entire life help an addict?

I also know a lot of my issues boil down to a lack of self-esteem and confidence.  This is a problem I have always struggled with.  It is clearly not getting better now!

This was mostly a rant to get my thoughts a little sorted, but opinions are always welcome!