Have you ever asked yourself if your work matters, or if you’ve made a difference in another person’s life? If you work in the Social Service department of a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF), then the answer is an emphatic YES! Social Service Directors, Designees, and Assistants help long-term residents and short-term “patients” get through some very difficult and scary life challenges.

We are there for people when they are realizing how much their life has changed because they can no longer live alone. We are there for people when they feel frustrated by changes in their health and their thinking. We are also there when they get mad about losing a pair of socks. We connect people to resources in the community, oftentimes to services they never knew existed.
We help find a clergy member to pray with people when prayer is requested. We help people exercise their right to vote, even when they are in the nursing home. We help people reconnect with their dignity when most of society has written them off.

We become unrecognized experts in mental illness, family dynamics, communication strategies, and even sales, such as when we must “sell” the idea of using a walker to a resident. We learn a lot about medicine and healthcare without attending a single day of medical school.

We are team players, always making sure to include as many team members as we can find because we know that the delivery of nursing home care is a team approach.

We are advocates, in the best spirit of social work, the field that informs our position. We stand up for residents and help them stand up for themselves in a way that preserves their dignity while making their voices heard.

We are flexible. Every day in Social Services is different. You may have an entire day planned, but when you arrive, a resident is at your door, and three other family members have left voicemails. And because you are a caring, helpful, and resourceful person, you rearrange your to-do list to make sure everyone feels heard and gets their needs met.

Working in a nursing home requires staff to know a lot of rules and regulations, a little bit of law, processes, behavioral health, assessment techniques, and generally how a nursing home runs. How do we learn all of this? The Social Service Designee in Long Term Care certificate course covers all these important elements and best practices; because if you are going to do something, you should always strive to do it well.

I always tell students that you can learn about regulations and how to fill out paperwork, but you can’t teach someone to care. That part comes naturally. We are the underdogs, the unsung heroes of healthcare. We are humble because we help people every day, in all kinds of ways, many of which most of our co-workers don’t see. Most importantly, we are the discipline that gets to document that what they did today was sit quietly and listen to a resident tell the story of how they came to this country and raised a family. How they worked hard to succeed. How they traveled and did things they loved. These are the moments and the conversations that stay with us long after the resident is gone and the chart is closed.

Like the residents of a nursing home, we all want to feel that we have a purpose, and that we are doing something meaningful with our lives. As a Social Service Designee, you are doing great work for people who need it. They may not always say ‘thank you,’ but when they do, it fills our hearts and souls with pride.

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For healthcare professionals wishing to become a Social Service Designee, CareerSmart Learning offers a self-paced comprehensive SSD certification program!

Social Services Designee in Long Term Care – Online Certification (Includes PDPM & Trauma-Informed Care updates) : This self-paced, online certificate program is designed to provide a comprehensive educational foundation for the role of Social Services Designee (SSD) in a skilled nursing facility (SNF) post-acute and rehabilitation environment. The course is 10 hours of total content, provided in 6 modules.