The Caseworker's Caseload — Summary

Rachel keeps a list of seven cases from her first year in a notebook she stores in her desk drawer. Not the worst outcomes, but the ones where she noticed something the file did not contain, acted on it, and something changed. A woman whose hands shook when she signed. A child who would not look up. A man whose benefits lapsed because he could not read the recertification letter. She has not added to the list in three years.

Her caseload is two hundred. Five years ago it was one hundred and twenty. AI has made the work faster and more accurate. Intake that took forty minutes now takes twelve. Processing errors are below one percent. The increase is invisible because the system makes it manageable. Two hundred cases on a dashboard is as scannable as one hundred and twenty in a stack of folders. Rachel can process two hundred cases. She cannot know two hundred people.

In her first year, the forty-minute meeting was the condition under which she noticed things the form did not ask about. The woman’s hands shook because the form required a signature and the signature took time. The child’s behavior was visible over forty minutes in a room. The man’s relief at being read to was palpable because Rachel was reading the questions aloud. Noticing was never in the job description. It was in the encounter.

The dashboard flags what it is designed to flag: missed deadlines, eligibility changes, documentation gaps. It does not flag the quality of a person’s situation between the flagged events. The woman whose housing has become unsafe. The family whose circumstances have shifted in ways the recertification does not ask about.

At five o’clock Rachel calls a client the system has not flagged. Just worried. The call goes to voicemail. The system records the call. It does not record the worry.