u/941026

I live in Virginia, graduated with my MSW last summer, and am working towards my LCSW; I have about 25% of my hours and supervision hours that I need until I can take the test. It seems like for LMSW, I can do that right now, all I need to do is apply and take a test.

My job security may be in danger at the beginning of next year due to changes at the company, so I'm thinking it may be smart to go ahead and have more letters behind my name for if/when I have to job hunt? But I know the test/application is expensive, and in a year and a half I'm going to have my LCSW anyway, so is it worthwhile for me to get the LMSW in the interim?

All my SW experience is in healthcare; I currently work at a CCRC doing essentially LTC social work and discharge planning. My eventual goal is to go into a medical subspecialty like oncology or transplant SW. Thanks friends for the advice :)

I've lost just under 75lbs over the course of five years or so, but most of the weight loss (50lbs) has been in the last two years. I'm very proud of myself and am happy to have lost the weight, I am noticeably healthier and less miserable now.

But I just feel so flabby, like I am only stretch marks. My boobs and butt are empty and deflated. My stomach looks like cottage cheese and is also like 90% stretch marks. I thought I would feel better about myself having lost all this weight, and when I'm wearing clothes I do, but underneath I just feel like I'm just a bunch of excess skin and stretch marks.

I do plan on getting procedure(s) to remove extra skin and perhaps a breast lift (not augmentation), but all advice online says not to pursue these procedures if you plan on having children, which I do hope to do in the next few years. So I have to wait.

I'm not really looking for advice on how to mitigate the stretch marks or excess skin, bc in my opinion, the only thing that really can work is surgery. I'm just looking for advice or words of wisdom on how to appreciate my new body (or hate it less). Thanks in advance <3

Does anyone know of more niche social work roles within healthcare? I'm talking like oncology social worker, or transplant social worker. I'm used to doing SNF discharge planning primarily, but when I get my LCSW that obviously will open a lot of career doors, and I'm interested in more specialized healthcare positions. Does anyone know of any other healthcare social work niches I could look into? I am not interested in hospice, or at least, I would only be interested in inpatient.

I work in a continuing care retirement community, so we have all the way from independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing, memory care, long term care. I primarily work in the skilled and long term care divisions and love it-- I also occasionally help out in AL/MC. Love my job, love the community. However, budget changes have come, and now there is no room in the healthcare budget for my job anymore, and I am being made to move to the assisted living (AL) and memory care (MC) side and being under the AL budget. This change is supposed to take place starting next Monday.

I am super unhappy about this for several reasons, and am trying to see what I can do to mitigate/change this. However, it seems my job will primarily be with AL and MC. There has not been a SW in AL/MC at this company before. To my understanding, there is not a dire need that leadership in AL/MC had for a SW; the reason I'm being moved is budgetary. They are telling me I can have a big say in crafting the job description and make the parameters for the role more or less. But I'm struggling to see a need or a gap that I can fill over there. The administrator flat out told me that I would NOT be doing the UAIs or ISPs (however I'm meeting with leadership tomorrow and hopefully this can change). The nurse manager over there does those and is super involved in the residents' lives.

The way that leadership has thus far utilized me in AL/MC has been to participate in their annual care plan meetings, help facilitate moves between levels of care, and to solve little problems for the residents, like helping them fix a broken phone, or help a lady whose newspaper stopped being delivered. The care plan meetings are annual so they don't happen often, and the moves don't happen super often either. And the other day I met with the AL admin and she told me an example of how she sees me being utilized when I move: one resident is always emailing and calling her, and the admin believes it's due to loneliness. So I guess she wants me to solve that? I am not interested in being a therapist, I was not hired to do that, and I have no experience providing real therapy. Nor am I a volunteer there solely to provide companionship. I am struggling to know what I can do as a SW in AL/MC that will not be just filling up my time. I'm happy to fix people's phones and provide some companionship, but that cannot be the bulk of my job. I have an advanced degree, and the way that the AL admin has utilized me thus far (and how she seemingly plans to use me) has not respected or acknowledged that.

Since the news came, I have been working on creating an annual social work assessment for the AL/MC residents, with things like reviewing POA/AMD, code status, social and behavioural functioning, cognitive and depression screenings, etc. But that is not something that is currently supposed to be being done; I'm just creating it as something I could do. And doing it to what end? Will it improve the lives of the residents there, for some assessment to just go and sit in their chart? I have also thought about facilitating support groups as an idea, but the chaplains currently run all of the ones that we already have. I suppose I could meet with them to collaborate on them and/or try and create a new one.

I am in the process of supervision towards licensure, so for that and other reasons, I REALLY do not want to leave this job. I only just started last August. I am passively looking for new jobs but it's scarce out here. Tomorrow when I meet with leadership, I'm going to propose to them that I keep one hall in healthcare, bc I also don't believe that whatever they'll have me do in AL will fill up 40 hours a week. I would really appreciate any advice on how I could be effectively utilized as an AL social worker and/or what role SW can serve in this environment with this population.

Thanks for reading my rant.

TLDR what can a social worker do in an assisted living environment?