Pros
The pros surrounding what my job involved had to do with autonomy. One is essentially given a population of individuals to case manage, and you are left to figure out through trial and error what works and what doesn't work with regard to stabilizing your population. My job was to case manage a population of all male participants who had once been homeless, but who were provided housing in a permanent environment with others. The biggest task was managing conflict. As a case manager, you are dragged into personality conflicts, as well as wholly legitimate ones. The dynamic ranged from mild complaints about a housemate with bad breath, to criminal activity from a participant that drew law enforcement. There was never a dull moment. This job kept me on my toes, and unless you truly love social work, this job is not for you. You had to be active in your role, connected with your participants, and building relationships no matter the cost. It's a sacrifice, but incredibly rewarding knowing that you have secured disability benefits for someone, or even just provided transportation to and from a doctor's appointment.
Cons
Leadership. Leadership- with very few exceptions- are so detached from what's involved in managing individuals with substance use disorders, or a mental illness, it's staggering. They offer no practical training in these areas, and so case managers are left to navigate situations that jeopardize not only their safety and well being, but also jeopardizes relationships that ought to be productive, but instead become stale and ineffective. The only trainings offered mainly consist of CPR, inclusion and diversity stuff, or subjects completely unrelated to the job. Trainings that involve processing applications for SNAP benefits, disability benefits, or how to engage individuals with a variety of mental illnesses, substance use disorders, behavioral problems, and connecting them to services in the community, etc, are non-existent. To most members of leadership, providing housing is the main goal, no matter the impact to communities, neighbors, or even members of case management charged with managing a population of people so afflicted with those conditions mentioned. And this is why turnover is so high. Congregate members of case management are expected to babysit- to sit in an office all day at a congregate home, and present oneself as some force of authority in order to deter participants from behaving badly in a manner that affects others in the congregate home, neighborhood, or community. Sadly, the agency doesn't provide the tools for case management to perform such a task. Such tools don't actually exist. And when case managers realize this, and find themselves with the epiphany that they are with a futile job in the absence of tools that don't exist, they leave. The bottom line for leadership is revenue. Father Bill's, at its core, is a business. And there is money to be made in providing housing to those who are homeless. This is the lens they look through, unfortunately. Assisting case managers with proper training, practical solutions to challenges, etc, is not their priority.