How Volunteering Informed My Philosophy of Social Work
Kelsey CastoMy philosophy of social work has developed over time, ever changing as I have changed and grown through my lived experiences. At this stage of my life, there is so much behind me to draw on, reflect on, and learn from, and the older I have gotten, the better able I have become at reflecting and learning from all facets of my experiences, whether direct or indirect. In my younger years, “social work” was such an abstract concept, one which I really didn’t have any concrete frame of reference for. Though I have always had a passion for helping, had you asked teenage me how I viewed myself, or where I saw myself in 5, 10, 20 years’ time, the answer would not have been in social work. I had no idea until the last few years that what I was passionate about was social work, and that I would begin informing the basis of my future practice long before I ever even thought to pursue a professional degree.
The Experiences That Shaped Me
I moved 2000 miles away from home and married a childhood friend, who struggled with addiction and, like his father before him, had spent much of his adult life in and out of jail. I did not fully appreciate the extent of his struggles before relocating, but most of my 6 years of marriage were spent seeing him either through a glass window and speaking over phone receivers or, once he was transferred from county jail to prison, sitting across a table from him. During this season, I learned a substantial amount about the broken corrections system in this country and state, and about the injustices of exploitative communications services available to the families of incarcerated people, and the substantial lack of true rehabilitative efforts behind the systems here, as well as the capitalist hellscape that is for-profit prisons.
I was motivated to become active in advocacy efforts for incarcerated people in Texas, as well as for their families. I took part in many demonstrations at jails, researched and spoke at local agencies, and volunteered with the Texas Inmate Families Association, where I helped run gift drives for kids with an incarcerated parent, as well as school supply drives for those same children. I also helped run parole packet workshops for families to learn how to advocate for their loved ones at their parole hearings, teaching them to advocate for their release on parole. It was a very eye-opening period of my life, and I will be forever grateful for the relationships and growth I gained during that time.
I was also the victim of a violent crime and experienced the harsh realities of the justice system from another perspective. After trying to report the ordeal, which took several months and multiple law enforcement agencies to finally get the report filed successfully, I had to appear before a grand jury and testify to my experience. Due to the failure of the law enforcement agencies to take my report, and the lack of evidence collected as a result, this experience resulted in nothing but revictimization and a sense that I was not only responsible for what had happened to me, but also for the lack of proper police work. I was not a police officer, and I had no credentials, yet I left that court room feeling like somehow, I had done something wrong.
I can’t say that I am grateful for the entirety of that experience, but it did serve to teach me more about the broken social systems in place in this country and was the catalyst for my pursuit of higher education. I completed my Associate’s degree with honors in 2016, followed by my Bachelor’s degree, majoring in psychology and sociology, in 2018. Due to several events that year, including the death of my father, and subsequent divorce when my husband ended up back in jail again, my academic career took a back seat to more pressing needs.
I lost my home to foreclosure that year, as my father had been living with me and helping with the bills, and my husband was no longer able to contribute financially, so I had to redirect my efforts in rebuilding my life. It turned out that my father did not have a will in place, and though his estate was very small, I then had to learn how to navigate probate court and settle his affairs with the banks. This taught me how little we prepare our children for the hard things in life. I learned many things in high school and beyond, but estate planning and management was not among them. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
The Season of Change
Time went on, and in 2021, during the COVID-19 epidemic, I discovered that I was pregnant with my first child. At my first ultrasound, it turned out that I was quite a bit further along than we’d thought, as I had not really had any symptoms. I was referred to a high risk obstetrician and would learn that there was very little amniotic fluid in there, and my child had significantly enlarged kidneys. Due to the lack of amnio fluid, imaging was very challenging, and there was a lot that we simply did not know and would not know until after he was born. My high risk OB went against the grain, and said that traditionally, the common practice is to get baby out and into the NICU as soon as it is thought they are developed enough to be compatible with life, but because my baby’s heart rate was so strong, and he did not appear to be in any distress, that he thought we should keep him in and give his lungs as much time as possible to develop.
We planned to deliver him around what we estimated was 39 weeks, and I received steroid shots two and one week before then to support lung development. I met with the labor & delivery team at the hospital where I would give birth, including a social worker and charge nurse who asked and documented my wishes, so that we had a plan in place for all possible outcomes. It was during this time that I expressed my desire to not keep my baby on life support if it was found that his lungs were not strong enough to sustain life, and if there was no potential for high quality of life. This was the first decision I made as a mother, and it was hard, but it was right.
My son came into the world screaming with tiny little squeaky lungs in his little 5 pound body after hours of laboring only to encounter distress and have to go for an emergency c-section. The hospital I gave birth at had no room in the NICU, but fortunately it was right across the street from the children’s hospital, and there was a sky bridge connecting the two facilities, so I was able to go see him the next day in a wheelchair. He was so tiny, and he needed a lot of care. He was 8 days old before I held him for the first time. I discharged from the hospital that same day and was back at my desk working two days later.
It was then that I learned about the detriment of systems in place to support families as they grow; I had no maternity leave through my job, and being a single mother, I could not afford to take the unpaid time. I was fortunate that I had a wonderful manager who was supportive of my needs, and she covered for me to be away from my desk as much as necessary. I spent my evenings at the hospital and was able to call and get morning reports from his nurse every morning. My baby was very sick, and he underwent his first major surgery when he was just a couple of days old. He had a peritoneal catheter placed for peritoneal dialysis to clean the toxins out of his blood and body because his kidneys were not functioning properly and were not filtering.
During the 112 days that my child was in the NICU, I had to consent to many procedures and surgeries that carried so many risks, but without them he would not survive. I had maintained a partial DNR (do not resuscitate) order in the event his heart stopped at any time during these surgeries, as I did not want to put his little body through the damage of chest compressions. My wishes were that they do everything possible to keep his heart beating and keep him here with us, but that if it stopped, they were to leave him alone. This was such a hard decision to make, but again, it was right.
In the first few weeks of his stay in the NICU, I met with the palliative care team, whose job it was to support families dealing with complex care, complex diagnoses, and end-of-life care in some cases. There was a palliative RN, who met with me weekly to go over everything on my son’s chart, and helped me to understand everything so I could make sound, informed decisions. She also helped me work out questions to ask and helped me to properly articulate them so that the attending doctor and nurse understood what I was asking. The other member of the palliative team was an LCSW, who served as my therapist, helping me to navigate the grief and active trauma of consenting to things that could kill my child, and the stress of making those decisions.
That was the first time I had heard of an LCSW, and my experience in the NICU, coupled with her care and compassion through what had been one of, if not the hardest, times in my life, was the final missing piece and what called me to pursue my MSW. I still hadn’t realized it then, but my philosophy of social work was all but formed at this point. I just needed to take the classes to learn the terminology, the names for the theories and frameworks, and how to recognize the lenses through which I would come to see the world.
How Volunteering Tied It All Together
In January of 2022, I began work on my MSW to learn how to do social work, and, it turns out, I had already been doing social work for much of my life in one way or another. There was an additional piece that I did not anticipate; in my concentration year beginning in spring of 2025, I became an intern with LIGHT Movement. I hadn’t known what to expect, as I had never worked so closely with a non-profit before, much less such a young one, and I hadn’t taken any courses on somatics or polyvagal theory specifically, nor had I worked in an outreach capacity. It turned out that I did have quite a few applicable skills though, I just needed to dip my toe in and see how I could help. During my time here, I also have learned more about the many faces of grief, and how many forms it takes. It is only after coming to this realization that the experiences that shaped my philosophy of social work were experiences that taught me compassion through first hand grief and trauma: grief for the sense of powerlessness in the face of systems that harm our communities, grief for those same communities, grief for the life that might have been had addiction or spontaneous medical anomalies not occurred, and really grief for the girl who may have lost a bit of her shine through the hard things in life.
Come Volunteer With Us
Even if social work isn’t your forte, we have many functions we could use your help with. We are a volunteer run non-profit organization, and are always looking for help in video editing, social media, technical support, content creation, outreach, networking, and programming. We would love to work with you! Whether you are local to the Denver area or not, our goal is to reach and support all those experiencing grief. Check out our website for our next volunteer training sessions to see what LIGHT Movement is all about.
