Professional Development and Year-end Self-care for Caseworkers

BY ANNE MEEKER

It’s the home stretch of 2024 and the 118th Congress, and for those of you staying in your roles into the next term, it might feel like you’re bracing for a tidal wave of a particularly heavy caseload to come.

But as we’ve said previously in thinking about the coming year: the only thing truly in your control is how you respond to constituents — and do that well, you have to prioritize taking care of yourselves.

Today, we’ll wrap up some advice and ideas for self-care and professional development from our previous webinars, resources, and some advice from people who have jumped between casework and other fields. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you have other ideas, we’d love to hear them.

Ring the bell for yourselves

Many teams have some kind of regular practice of marking casework success, whether it’s a wall of photos from successful cases or a bell to ring when a big casework victory happens. At the end of the year, individually or as a team, take some time to look back over all those successes — and the smaller, quieter victories that might not be on the wall. Did your team fix a process issue that had been causing problems? Did you build new relationships with community services that let you do better referrals or cosponsored events? Did you set and keep good boundaries with a tough frequent flier? Did you hire and onboard new staff?

For some teams, this may be part of your end-of-year communications, including feeding into an EOY report. Whether this is the case or not, make sure to set aside some time for the wins that aren’t public, but are still personally and professionally meaningful.

For individual caseworkers, this is also a great time to write a personal “brag sheet” about what you’ve been able to accomplish in the last year and in your career in casework. This might include data like how many cases you’ve opened and closed, how much money you’ve brought back, but also new skills you’ve developed, relationships you’ve managed, protocols/processes you’ve developed, trainings you’ve led, and more. These are the kinds of things that can be difficult to come up with on the fly if you need them for a cover letter (more on that below), and also a nice way to mark your own professional growth as you start the next year.

Build a system to check in on mental health

Burnout is one of the biggest challenges of sustainable casework — and the tough truth is that it is easier to prevent burnout in the first place than fix it once it’s happened.

In our previous webinar on Burnout and Care, Dr. Julie Collier, Director of Programs for the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare, describes a "stress continuum" or traffic light system as a helpful self-assessment tool for checking in on stress levels. Team members can identify where they are on a spectrum from green (doing well) to yellow (showing some stress) to orange (more significant stress/struggling) to red (in crisis). When Dr. Collier implemented this at Stanford, her team would do daily check-ins using this color system, with staff getting creative about describing different shades within each color (like "greenish-yellow" or using paint store color names). The system helps normalize that people move back and forth along this continuum, and encourages open communication beyond just saying "I'm fine." If someone says they're "really Orange today," it signals to colleagues that they need support. Dr. Collier notes that stress injuries (what we might colloquially refer to as “burnout”) often occur as people move between the yellow and orange zones — so implementing a regular traffic light check in can help identify which people on the team may need support, or help caseworkers learn to check in with themselves to ask for time off or extra help on a tough case.

Doing the same casework day in and day out can be a driver of burnout, so the chance to work on projects that are tangentially related to casework (or a skill that might improve casework, like learning a language commonly spoken in-district) can help break up the workweek and help keep caseworkers engaged. As far as possible, it may also be worth talking with your team’s management about instituting a version of Google’s famous “10% rule” for your casework team. This rule refers to a Google practice of letting employees spend 10% of their time on projects not directly related to their job function that would help them gain perspective, skills, and experience that they can bring back to their main work or lead to future roles.

This will likely look different for every office, but could include working on a legislative memo from a casework idea, drafting a PSA campaign about common casework issues, collaborating with a local civic tech group, or getting the whole team out of the office to do community service work or attend a conference.

Advice on transitioning out of casework

And we can’t talk about professional development without talking about next steps. To be clear, we are not encouraging caseworkers to leave en masse — part of our goal with the Casework Navigator program is to help elevate and support casework teams to help retain talented caseworkers, keeping their deep expertise and constituent focus in Congress. But part of elevating that expertise and experience is appreciating that it can serve caseworkers very well in future positions.

We reached out to a few folks who made the transition from casework to other fields, including policy, and can’t say it any better than Emily McKern, a former legislative staffer-turned-caseworker:

“As a caseworker, you’ve developed a unique understanding of the real-world challenges people face, and that’s invaluable for shaping policies that truly meet those needs. With that in mind, to make a transition from casework to policy, market your skills by emphasizing your ability to assess needs, understand complex dynamics, and your ability to advocate for change based on the gaps you’ve witnessed in casework. Being attuned to the human side of policy shortfalls gives you keen insight to crafting policies that make a lasting impact and should be highlighted if you’re seeking to make a jump into policy.” —Emily McKern, Director of Constituent Services for Sen. Joni Ernst [R, IA]

With that wisdom in mind, a few other tips:

1. Be prepared to explain what casework is, and what skills it has given you.
   Congressional casework as a professional field is not well-known outside of district offices — even in DC, people may not be familiar with what kinds of tasks you handle in your current role. Be prepared (and excited!) to explain what you do, including the abstract skills you’ve gained. Are you analytical, empathetic, organized, a lightning-fast learner? Think about what kinds of case stories show your creativity, problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and everything else you’ve picked up in this challenging role.

2. Build your network.
   Yeah, everyone tells you to do this, but it’s even more important for people trying to leave a field that’s not well-known. You can be the wild card with an unusual background in a stack of resumes, or a strong personal recommendation from someone who knows you and knows your work. Building your network also doesn’t have to be separate from your job: take every opportunity you can to go to DC and talk to other caseworkers, policy staff, agency staff, nonprofits and think tank folks, or with other elected teams, service providers, local research groups, and more in your state or district. Floating (tactically and sensibly!) that you may be looking to explore what comes next may turn up some interesting ideas.

3. Meet the moment.
   A critical part of making that transition is explaining why you bring a needed perspective or skillset now. There are so many big cultural conversations crying out for casework expertise — from the Department of Government Efficiency to the growing spotlight on implementation to the ever-vibrant conversations and groups working on how to reduce polarization and rebuild trust. Practice talking about how your work — the details, the granularity, the individual constituent voices — relates to the big picture. It may not be something that comes naturally when you’ve had your head down in the weeds, but will help you position yourself as a source of timely insight and fresh perspective.