The Cumberland County Department of Social Services has steadily hired social workers and other employees, but there are still 105 vacancies throughout the department.
Now the department is focusing on how to bring in new workers and retain the ones they already have. “How can we keep people here?” Donnie Perry, the department’s business operations division director, said during a social services board meeting last month.
Modernizing the job of social workers is one of the department’s key strategies to attract and retain employees. That includes new technology, including a groundbreaking virtual simulator and in-the-field internet access, to bring social workers into the 21st century.
Cumberland County DSS will soon start using the University of Utah’s Virtual Social Work Trainer. The software allows users to simulate welfare checks, searching different rooms of a virtual home for signs of child safety risks and positive indications of child care.
At the end of every level, users are scored based on the number of risks and positive indications found. They can also see the total time spent investigating and how long they spent in each room. The scores and other data collected can be compared to previous attempts.
“This program not only allows the worker to practice, but it provides feedback,” Heike Hammer, the department’s performance management division director, explained to the board before playing a demo video of the software. “You have data so you can track individual social workers’ progress. You can see what areas they’re struggling in and see where more training is needed.”
Brenda Jackson, department director, told the board that the cases simulated by the software are the types of complex scenarios county social workers see daily. The hope is that by running through those cases in a controlled environment, social workers will be better prepared physically and emotionally for what they’ll face in the field.
“Our child welfare and our adult protective services folks are first responders. They don’t have bulletproof vests and guns and mace, but they go into homes in potentially dangerous situations,” Jackson said. “So burnout and stress and fear of safety can cause anxiety and all those kinds of things and secondary trauma from some of the things that they see.”
Secondary trauma, also called compassion fatigue, is the intense mental and physical fatigue brought on by empathizing with another person’s trauma or pain. Social workers who are repeatedly exposed to others’ trauma are especially at high risk of developing secondary trauma, according to The National Child Traumatic Stress Network and research published in Social Work, an official journal of the National Association of Social Workers.
They’re also at high risk of suffering from poor mental health. Two-thirds of British social workers surveyed by the British Association of Social Workers and The Independent in 2023 reported their mental health suffered because of their work.
With better preparation for the job’s demands, along with Cumberland County’s focus on revamping its employee wellness program, Hammer and Jackson hope the training will keep them in the field and employed at the department. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates an average of over 67,000 social worker positions open each year, mainly because many currently employed are leaving the field.
The county’s social services department has 57 vacancies across its adult and child services division, which houses most of its social workers. Twelve of those vacancies are a result of turnover.
“It will also help with staff retention because, when you get somebody that’s fresh out of college and has never had that experience, [what they see] is quite shocking,” Hammer told the board of the new software. “With this, they’ll be provided with that opportunity to become familiar with it before actually stepping into it.”
Cumberland County is receiving the University of Utah’s software for free. In exchange, the county’s social workers are part of the university’s study into how well the training improves work performance. The data collected by the county social workers will be sent to the university so its researchers can continue to improve the software.
“We’re definitely at the groundbreaking state of how to train social workers,” Jackson said.
Social services departments across North Carolina use similar virtual training software to prepare their social workers. However, many are paying tens of thousands of dollars for them. Hammer said the software Accenture Virtual Experience Solution, or AVENUES, used by the Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services costs up to $120,000.
Long-awaited tech upgrades
After two years of saving up, the Cumberland County Social Services Department is trading in old laptops for iPads and Apple Pencils.
The department used unappropriated funds from last year’s budget to purchase 300 iPads and Apple Pencils for social workers to take into the field. The combined new tech will let social workers travel lighter on home visits, easily transition their longhand notes into typed text and integrate with the iPhones the department has already purchased for employees.
Each iPad will come with an air card, or a mobile hotspot, so social workers won’t have to worry about losing internet access while in the field.
“We’re hoping that all of these things will help us with staff recruitment and retention,” Jackson told the board. “Because the cases that we have now are very, very complex.”
The consistent connection is critical with the state’s rollout of the Partnership and Technology Hub for North Carolina. PATH NC is an online, statewide child welfare case management system that is replacing the current physical paperwork filled out by child services social workers. It’s used when a social worker finds issues during an investigation that don’t require child removal but should be resolved.
The hub also provides the social worker additional resources like a chatbot for policy questions and interfaces for other resources like Medicaid.
The starting salary for social workers in Cumberland County can be less than $39,000. Jackson hopes the training and technology will help make the jobs more attractive.
“We may not be able to offer the money, but how do we make Cumberland County a premier place that people want to work?” Jackson said. “Not just because of the money, but because of the support they receive, the training that they receive, those kinds of things.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the CityView News Fund.
