Dear Kentucky legislators: Social workers are leaving in droves. Here’s why.

I write this letter as a Social Service Clinician II with the Cabinet for Health & Family Services, a devoted social worker, and lifelong citizen of Kentucky to implore your help. The situation we social workers and our support staff with CHFS face now is more dire than ever with the mass exodus of so many excellent social workers and staff from our ranks to work in the private sector for better pay and less stress. Those who pay the price are our clients, your constituents, and our fellow citizens.

The simple answers that might be “reduce caseloads” and “hire more workers.” While these are essential, no doubt, but the root of this is that our salaries are criminally low. New, college-educated social workers can expect $30,000-$35,000 which, mid-range, is about $15 per hour. Prominent employers like Target and Walmart offer as much with no need for overtime or altering of vacations because of an emergency hearing in court, no taking home the sometimes soul-crushing weight of clients’ trauma or having to pay for a degree that just made us a candidate for the job. I respectfully submit that this is unacceptable for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, for its government or its people, to value the livelihood and safety of its most vulnerable citizens’ advocates, those of us in the field and those who support us, with so little that our ranks are diminished to the point that we are at risk of unintended oversights that can result in further abuse, neglect, and even fatalities.

You may not know what it’s like to be called at 2 a.m. to go to a hospital because a baby girl was born to a mother who intended to sell her for enough money to maintain her addiction for one more day. You may not have gone to the West End of Louisville with the police and pray you do not call too much attention to yourself, or have to remove children who don’t know any better than to love the parents who manufacture methamphetamine and use them as a human shields when the police forcibly enter a house, but I do. We do. From those experiences, I can tell you two things about each: no amount of training prepares you and no dollar amount motivates you enough. With that said, social workers and our support staff are fully aware of the need for long, exhausting days in the worst environment, with the angriest people, and most delicate situations, yet we still go to work to serve others. While we love what we do, we cannot work for subpar pay because the stories which we tell about the work we do, does not pay the bills.

Even as I write this letter after hours, I know that I could be using this time to work on service recordings of my client encounters, answering the copious amounts of other emails, arranging visits to my children in foster care, and, in the new landscape where we are absorbing cases from the workers who are leaving, just learning my new clients’ names but still I write to you. I write to you as a professional from a field that does not abide injustice, to others or ourselves, and cannot abide the injustice of abusing our genuine, caring natures in the name of “budgetary restrictions.” So, please, help us so we can help others. We chose one of the fields with the fewest accolades, the lowest pay, and highest chance of being put in danger because we know that if we don’t, no one will, and we need your help now.

So, while there are no current bills that directly relate to compensation of CHFS staff, I am begging you to introduce, advocate, and commit to legislation that would make being a social worker for the state’s child and adult welfare agency fair and competitive. For my part, I’d be happy to answer any questions, speak before any bodies of officials willing to listen, and, ultimately, keep serving families until a resolution can be found but please do not make me wait until I cannot wait any longer.

Sincerely, Devin S. Reul

Devin Reul is a Master of Social Work student at Spalding University (2023) He a Social Service Clinician II with the Cabinet for Health & Family Services where he has worked since May of 2017.