Sacramento Social Worker Shares Journey In Achieving Career Goal
Last month, Sacramento approved a $117.5 billion budget that boosts spending in social services. The budget allocates $749 million more next year for child care, a 5 percent pay hike to doctors, dentists and providers in Medi-Cal, additional aid and services to families on welfare if they have more children and ends a 7 percent cut to a program that helps seniors and the disabled stay out of nursing homes, according to the AP/CBS Local article. California's social service programs suffered deep cuts in the last recession, and now the legislature wants to increase spending as the state rebounds.
The spending infusion may create more opportunities like the job Maria Diploudis landed a year ago as a child protective services social worker, emergency response, reporting to the County of San Mateo, Human Services Agency, Children & Family Services. It was a long and arduous journey for Diploudis to land the job. Initially, she received a bachelor's degree in theater arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She followed it with a master's degree in social services from Cal State University, East Bay in Hayward.
While earning her master's, Diploudis took advantage of the many tech opportunities in the Bay Area by working as affiliate manager at Smith Micro Software. After that, she briefly held similar roles at Avira GmbH and 6scan before serving in social work internships at Glide and the County of San Mateo, Human Services Agency, Children & Family Services. The tech jobs and internships provided all the work experience Diploudis would need to land her position at the Human Services Agency.
She explained that experience included shadowing social workers in the adoptions and emergency response units as they interacted with clients and child abuse referrals, working with foster family agencies and foster youth, managing adoptions cases, working in the family maintenance and reunification unit, and managing cases and supporting families through family reunification, maintenance and case closure. Leading up to her full-time role, Diploudis also wrote court reports and worked closely with community service providers to deliver services to clients.
Residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, Greg is a patented inventor, technology enthusiast and intrepid journalist. He finds inspiration in diverse experiences, organizations, people and places -- from restaurants to politics, movies, music and, most of all, his daughter.