CFS Social Worker Update - December 2, 2021

Dear OCEA member,

CFS members attended a virtual briefing Tuesday night to develop action plans to deal with long-standing issues impacting Social Workers and Senior Social Workers in particular. Across the board, a lack of sufficient resources has pushed workers to leave County service and has degraded the work culture. The ER program and several other programs are facing severely excessive caseload rates, scheduling demands that impact work-life balance, and feckless management unable to provide needed resources. The problems brought forward on the call came directly from Social Workers’ responses to a recent survey. Tuesday night's briefing focused on solutions to these entrenched problems.

The elections of 2018 and 2020 resulted in two OCEA-supported candidates, Doug Chaffee and Katrina Foley, winning seats on the Board of Supervisors. Worker-friendly supervisors in Orange County is unprecedented. Both supervisors and their staffs met with OCEA representatives to hear first-hand the challenges faced by workers in CFS. The engagement of these two supervisors is the key to acquiring the resources Social Workers desperately need to do their jobs.

Action Plan
Based on the survey and feedback from Social Workers at Tuesday’s briefing, OCEA is executing an Action Plan that includes a list of demands to be presented to SSA Director Debra Baetz on December 14th, 2021. These demands will include:

• Relief from excessive caseloads
• Hiring and training additional staff
• Enhancing the pay for all Senior Social Workers and those in more demanding programs
• Ensuring workers receive overtime

Making Change Happen
Fulfilling these demands in a timely manner will be challenging, even with the support of two supervisors. Should implementation lag, OCEA will organize workplace actions that include press/media exposure, direct advocacy at the Board of Supervisors, and rallies and marches at SSA facilities. We also want to be sure every program is being included in this demand for improvements. If you would like to provide feedback on the demands and offer insights from YOUR program, please attend a virtual meeting on Tuesday, December 7th at 6:30 p.m. You can confirm attendance by completing this RSVP link.

You are also strongly encouraged to opt-in for text updates on this campaign by texting the word SOCIALWORKER to 43506. Signing up for text alerts is critical so that our actions can be coordinated.

Please reach out to OCEA labor representatives Saliem Aregaye at saregaye@ocea.org, Kate Wolf at kwolf@ocea.org, or Charles Leon at cleon@ocea.org.

It’s time to break the cycle of workplace injustice at SSA. Standing together, we can do it.

In Solidarity,

OCEA Team

Publication Date: December 2, 2021