How They Treat Their Helpers in the USA

[Help_I_Live_In_Idaho]

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, I started working in
Idaho in the early 1990s just when the privatization hysteria started - "self reliance" and "privatizing
health and welfare programs." Now in 2008 we have almost
all social workers and counselors working on the
"billable hour," using their own cars, buying their
own gas, and getting paid only for face-to-face contact with clients. The result is that we make half what we did before, pay our own expenses, have no federal employment rights because we are on contract, have no health insurance, have no insurance for transporting clients and are withering away socially, financially and morally. I have had colleagues that live in their cars and cheat on billing to eat.

The social welfare system in Idaho has grown larger, costs
more, and now supports a public sector of regulation and a
private sector of pure corruption. PSR (psychosocial
rehabilitation) workers baby sit clients for hours at $45-$55 per hour playing games and cards - doing "play
therapy." The public sector regulates people so completely
that it takes up to 8 hours to do the initial paperwork for
one client. Workers rarely look at the paperwork again because you don't get paid for anything except personal contact and wasting our time writing it and trying to make the narrative sound like workers are accomplishing something.

The only thing we are accomplishing is keeping the ever
increasing population of mentally, sick, and impoverished out of the way of the corporate and cosmopolitan population and helping the top dogs suck the federal government. And, Most of us are so broke and so demoralized that we don't care anymore. In the mean time the rich social service corporation owners are getting richer on our backs and the social workers and counselors will soon join the impoverished ranks of our
clients.

This is the utopia privatization beings to us all.
We need to go back to public run social services.