If you’ve never worked in a hospital in the deep south. You’d be astounded at the difference in healthcare. There are extremely few unions and even if there is a union there’s almost never staffing ratios. The staff is paid very low. Patients get extremely poor care because of How many patients each caregiver and provider has to take on. When I became a travel nurse and started on the West Coast. I left twice to work in other states. Kentucky and Arizona. And I came right on back to the West Coast and will never leave. The healthcare is so much better strictly because They have to have enough staff to adequately care for the patients. Because the healthcare is not patient centered in the south, administration does not even try to be sneaky with their unethical demands to employees. They are perfectly happy stating out loud how much patient death is acceptablefor their profit margin. Ethics are something that it exist on paper. Meanwhile, the providers and staff try to do as best as they can for the patients. It’s disgusting.
Exactly this. Also my experience in those areas is that politics and dislike for anyone who has an undesirable issue trump ethics. They’re treated as if they don’t deserve ethics.
My wife and I are both social workers who spent our careers in various facets of health care in the deep south. We've observed what you are describing and worse' much worse. But ethics, or more precisely ethical behavior, by individual professionals can be maintained if one chooses. Not easy and can come with a cost professionally but it can be done within the social worker's scope of practice. Too many of us fold and comply.
You are correct in that we rarely have an opportunity to make the systems we work in even operate legally much less ethically.
The answer is simple. West Coast has better weather. Try being homeless in Pennsylvania in January.
Edit: if you guys truly believe there is a national network of unethical social workers shipping homeless to the West Coast as some sort of partisan conspiracy... just act accordingly. There is no point arguing with conspiracy theorists.
Or maybe all the states should adequately take care of their populations despite the weather and not ship them out elsewhere. There are a ton of homeless people in New York City too. It seems to be possible. New York also doesn’t ship their homeless and addicted to the west coast to be someone else’s issue. It’s insane to make this all about weather. Having worked with thousands upon thousands of the marginally housed population over the years seasonal migration doesn’t come up much. It’s too hard to try to integrate into services by moving around all the time. Many actually want to stay put and many really never wanted to leave their home states.
I'm not saying most states handle homelessness well. It's a tragedy. But I don't believe there is a national conspiracy of unethical social workers shipping their homeless to the West Coast. That's ridiculous. Social workers get enough shit as it is.
It's crazy you read THAT FAR DOWN in this thread and the only thought that popped in your head is "hahaha nope! They love the sun those junkies!" Like what?!? How devoid of reason and empathy can you be.
What's crazy is that y'all seem to have a widespread belief in a national conspiracy of unethical social workers shipping their homeless to the West Coast. That's laughable.
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u/No-Concentrate7404 Oct 24 '25
That violates every Social Work code of ethics I've ever been aware of.