Caseworker

A caseworker, often referred to as a Social Worker, is a person who is employed by a government agency or a private organisation to take on an individual's case and provide them advocacy, information or other services. Caseworkers are employed by a large number of organisations in the UK, especially in the voluntary and public sectors. In the United States, most government agencies that provide social services to children in poor or troubled families have a staff of caseworkers, each of whom is assigned a proportion of the cases under review at any given time. In Australia, caseworkers are predominantly assigned to work with Aboriginal children.

United Kingdom
In British Politics, caseworkers are often employed by Members of Parliament (MPs) to assist with problems brought to them by their constituents. The variety and type of work undertaken by these caseworkers varies greatly depending on the character of the MP. Often, MPs who focus very much on the needs of their constituency will have more active caseworkers, willing to offer assistance with a range of problems relating to tax, housing, welfare benefits, immigration and a range of other subjects.

United States
As of 2004, there were approximately "876,000 child welfare caseworkers in the United States. Seventy-two percent are women, and their mean salary is $30,590.  Caseworker turnover is high; every year, an estimated 20 percent of public caseworkers and 40 percent of private caseworkers leave their positions.:

Because of the delicate position of responsibility in which they are placed, caseworkers are often blamed when things go wrong with a family that they have been assigned to work with.

In one case that received national media attention, the caseworker for Rilya Wilson, a Florida child whose 1999 disappearance was not discovered until 2002, faced termination for purportedly falsifying reports that she had continued to visit with the family to check on the child's condition.