Newsletter: Taking care of yourselves in 2025
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break! Our last two newsletters covered how to think about preparing your team/casework operations for 2025, including anticipating what agency changes might shape your caseload. Today, we’re going to focus on you, with a new blog post on professional development and self-care tips for caseworkers.
We also have the early results from our survey on office caseloads, our report on disaster casework, and the usual roundup of agency news.
By the way, because it’s been a while since we’ve introduced ourselves: POPVOX Foundation is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to supporting legislatures around the world. I’m a former caseworker and casework manager, and take every opportunity I can to cheerlead for the role of casework in rebuilding trust in Congress and driving a constituent-focused legislative process.
If you have questions about our work or suggestions for how we can be helpful, please feel free to reach out by replying to this email, or shoot me a note at anne@popvox.org.
Anne Meeker
Deputy Director
POPVOX Foundation
Case Note: Professional Development for Caseworkers
2024 is almost over (thank goodness?) and we have some tips for caseworkers on how to take stock of the successes from the past year and institute some burnout-prevention tips for the coming Congress. We also talk a bit about planning for a transition away from casework, and how to think about marketing your casework skills for a new role.
Professional Development and Year-end Self-care for Caseworkers
Ideas for self-care and professional development for Congressional caseworkers, as well as advice from people who have jumped between casework and other fields.
Report: Disaster Casework
In October, our team convened a small roundtable of House offices who had recently handled natural disasters to hear about the biggest challenges facing teams in these crises. Our new report wraps up our findings and eight recommendations for what the Committee on House Administration, Chief Administrative Officer, and committees with jurisdiction over disaster-related agencies can do to strengthen constituent service in disasters.
Recommendations include:
Better resourcing agency liaison teams,
Exploring options to supplement MRA budgets to provide for disaster expenses like mass texting, and
Working with the House Ethics Committee to update guidance around referrals to nonprofits and Member-to-Member staff details.
Disaster Casework: Recommendations for Reform
Insights and recommendations for strengthening constituent services in disaster recovery, based on conversations with Congressional caseworkers and district staff.
How Many Cases is Normal?
Before we dive into these numbers, I want to be very clear: your team’s caseload is the reflection of a large number of factors that have nothing to do with whether or not you’re doing a good job.
So, why does this data matter? Because it shows that the right question isn’t “how many cases is normal” — it’s “how many cases is normal for my district/state.” No two districts or states have the exact same needs, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to casework.
We’ll be able to do some fancier math with more responses (and the survey is still open if you didn’t get a chance to complete it last week!), but for right now, here’s what’s standing out to us:
Average cases opened per week
House: 10-51
Senate: 40-325
Average cases closed per week
House: 6-50
Senate: 20-220
Goal/average of open cases per caseworker
House: 40-110 (noting historical highs in the 200s)
Senate: 60-300
Goal/average of open cases per team
House: 100-430
Senate: 250-2,000
Thank you so much to everyone who took our survey last week on baseline casework numbers! The survey is still open — if you have a second, let us know how many cases is normal for your team:
Agency News
New FAFSA just dropped
The Department of Education rolled out this year’s FAFSA form after last year’s revamped form was plagued by technical glitches.
Treasury releases a strategy for cutting red tape
The agency’s new Congressionally-requested strategy focuses on making it easier for all people to access benefits administered through the tax code, like tax credits, or disbursed through the Treasury, like SSA benefits.
TAS asks for help identifying big-picture issues
Speaking of access to Treasury services: for constituents whose issues with the IRS don’t quite rise to the level of casework services, the Taxpayer Advocate Service has a portal to report issues. After reporting an issue with IRS service or rules, TAS will update constituents on any action taken to address the issue. This would make a great tax-season PSA!
ICYMI: two big House Appropriations oversight hearings last week
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee held two oversight hearings on VHA’s projected budget shortfall and SSA’s funding and performance. They’re both worth a watch (or at least an AI summary), but especially the SSA hearing for updated stats on wait times and outgoing Commissioner O’Malley’s estimates for SSA’s funding needs for modernization and customer service. It was especially nice to hear several Members speak directly from their experience helping constituents struggling with SSA programs.
Updated flowchart of Enduring Welcome family reunification pathways from State/#AfghanEvac
Updated November 18, the chart provides information broken down by eligible pathway, reunification process, and resettlement requirements.
Defense of casework from Jennifer Pahlka
Recoding America author (and former Casework Navigator guest!) Jennifer Pahlka writes in her substack about why believing constituents is so important, vis-a-vis some drama around Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez’s [D, WA] recent legislation.
Quite the pair: SNAP is underutilized while stolen benefit claims soar
SNAP seems to be overused by the wrong people and underused by the right ones: a new USDA program will proactively reach out to college students who may qualify for SNAP. At the same time, reports of stolen benefits jumped by more than 100,000 claims from Q2 to Q3 of this year.
IRS asks Congress to unfreeze $20 billion frozen by legislative mistake
The Continuing Resolution currently funding the government accidentally duplicated a one-time cut to the IRS budget. IRS officials are asking Congress to undo this mistake in the upcoming budget negotiations before it has to freeze hiring or scale back on audits.
Wonder how much $ casework brings in every year…
It’s the season for year-end reports on how much money inspector general/auditor recommendations have saved taxpayers. Highlights include the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) bringing back $102 for every dollar invested in TIGTA, and the Government Accountability Office bringing back $76 for every dollar spent on its work. It does make you wonder how much money Congress brings back to constituents every year, in aggregate.
DOGE looks at Direct File
Incoming DOGE co-leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have expressed an interest in developing a mobile tax filing app like Direct File.
Nonprofit experiments with using AI to identify hurricane victims for cash payments
The nonprofit GiveDirectly is launching a pilot project to use AI to identify the hardest-hit neighborhoods from hurricanes Helene and Milton, and send disaster survivors cash through the same app they use to apply for and manage their government benefits. The group hopes that this pilot can be a model for future government programs.
Minimizing overlapping/redundant grants?
Flagging for those of you who also handle grants work/CPF/CDS: this week, Rep. Stephanie Bice [R, OK] introduced legislation to create a tracking system to identify instances where an entity has applied for and/or received multiple grants from different agencies for the same purpose.
Nerdy but important for future casework: OIRA says agencies can do user testing
Follow me down this rabbit hole: the Paperwork Reduction Act has, for years, meant that federal agencies need to seek clearance from OIRA before sending out any kind of mass communication, including some common usability testing practices like customer experience surveys. This week, OIRA clarified that PRA does not [usually] cover usability testing. This can speed up changes to agency websites and forms to be more user-friendly.
