My employment situation is such that I do casual or "fill in " coverage in both situations as a hospital social worker and when in the arctic as a child protection worker. It is somewhat like a substitute teacher or a casual nurse...filling in where there are temporary vacancies. I love the flexibility of such employment, but it does have its limitations including a cyclical income and NO pension! BUT this has been the pattern for the past 15 years and thus I do think I have some perspective on changes in the social work field.
I have been covering for last 5 weeks in a position of casual social worker in internal medicine in one of the local hospitals...a different coverage as the usual one is obstetrics...well I am just shaking my head at the logic or lack thereof of the re-organization of our SW dept at the hospital... inter disciplinary team based, then unit based now back to teams...all in 5 weeks...what about the maxim..."if it ain't broke why fix it".. now just some venting!
Unfortunately in any situation, the energy that is caught up in the political changes in any of those of us who are in the helping professions, is a drain on the direct client or customer service which is where our first priority needs to be.