Case manager: social services are STILL essential
Theresa – Chicago, IL
I am considered essential personnel—but I’m not on the frontlines in the way nurses in the hospitals or cashiers at the grocery stores are. I'm a case manager working with teens experiencing homelessness, some of our society’s most vulnerable. The thing about pandemics is that they don’t care about the problems that already exist in our society. This virus is quickly sweeping through and exacerbating nearly every social problem we can imagine, especially homelessness.
For shelters like mine, which serves runaway and homeless youth, a pandemic doesn’t mean we stop providing services. In fact, the services we provide are probably more in need as families are cooped up in houses together, kids are home from school, and tensions are running high as families are squeezed, both financially and physically. Due to COVID-19, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is closed until April 21st. CPS reported serving 16,451 homeless students in the last school year, about 4% of the student population. With this number of young people relying on a number of services provided by public schools, it’s certain there are tens of thousands of students now without this assistance, making the non-profit safety nets more important than ever.
Securing services and resources for youth experiencing homelessness is usually pretty difficult to coordinate, but we’re squeezed even more in a pandemic: many longer-term residential shelters for teens have paused their intakes; the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) is notoriously unresponsive, but is even worse now that many of their case managers are working from home; clinical therapists are turning to telehealth, which is not necessarily accessible for a young person without stable housing; and where programs were short-staffed before the pandemic, staff are increasingly overworked and covering shifts to make sure these sanctuaries can stay open.
Shelters are being told to “do the best they can” to practice the necessary social distancing to flatten the curve; but because of the limits of charity, there is literally nowhere else for people to go. Mayor Lightfoot has said that the city will rent thousands of hotel rooms to isolate people who are mildly ill with COVID-19, as well as those who fear they have been exposed and those who are awaiting test results—why can’t we do this for folks sleeping overnight in shelters? Pandemic or not, housing is a human right, and the COVID-19 crisis is just exacerbating the need for safe and stable housing for all. We must provide immediate safe and public housing forspace to house the homeless where they can have access to free medical resources.
The work I do is essential, and these programs need to stay up and running. Social service organizations need to do everything they can to make sure staff and the people they serve are safe during this health crisis. My managers get to work from home. Our administrative staff gets to work from home. With arguably too much flexibility around cleaning protocols and difficulties enforcing both social distancing and the Governor’s ‘stay-at-home’ order with young people, I am putting my health at risk 40 hours a week to serve the most vulnerable.
I’m collaborating with my coworkers now to draft up a list of demands to give to management—the first being hazard pay. Direct staff should be getting paid time and a half for the work we do, something my coworkers agree with me on. This is the first time I’ve had these types of conversations at my workplace. We don’t have a union and have never approached management in a unified way. COVID-19 is spurring up workplace struggles all across industry—and now more than ever is a time for us to learn that when we fight together, we can win.
