social worker

senior attorney

eligibility worker

mental health technician

juvenile correctional officer

Fresno County

As a Child Welfare Social Worker, I have only been in the job for a few months.  I have never worked such long days in any other job I have previously worked in as a Social Worker.  Typical work hours are beyond 8am-5pm and require evening work, so 10 + hours daily.  The most difficult part of the job is how little control you have over your schedule as there are meetings and things that come up that you must attend to at a moment's notice which takes away time from staying on task with Court report writing, your case management duties, scheduled meetings and contact visits with children.   I usually have to work on week-ends to do Court Reports as hearings are often scheduled for the caseload, a day or two apart from the last Court Report you just finished.  
Your caseload can be mostly in Fresno County, but you are also assigned children as far off as Southern California or Northern California and you can spend a day on the road traveling up to 12 hours to see a child.  There are some workers who also travel to see children out of State.  During the school year, the children get out of school late and you are supposed to see them in their placements so it means scheduling late contact visits at 4 pm or later depending on their after school activities.

The supervisors do not like to give you over time pay and will only pay you a small portion of overtime compared to what you are actually working i.e. 60 hour work week to meet the demands of the job.

Some units like Family Reunification offer very good training while another unit may have no training for the work tasks other than "on the job" training.


As an eligibility worker you arent even properly trained before they send you out to deal with clients. You are constantly drowning in work. Everything is super outdated an example of this would be you have to manually do a time card  (it's 2021-_-)The worst part is that every single program you need to use for the job  is super outdated and is constantly having somekind of issue. You're constantly praying for the programs to give you the correct results without crashing. If you are bilingual the job is even harder as you usually have to deal with bigger households which requires WAY more data entry but you're expected to complete cases in the same amount of time as English speaking workers. Upper management is so out of touch with reality it's infuriating. Management is always changing business practices that you can see are going to fail from a mile away and they always do. They show no love for employees this includes the union which was the biggest waste of money. Everyone I knew there wanted to quit or worked there long enough that they just no longer cared. They preach that they care about people but they don't even care about the employees. Hard pass being an eligibility worker maybe other departments or titles are different but this ain't it.  Supervisors and workers were mostly great people but all upper management including program Management should resign they have absolutely no idea how to run this department

I was hired on as a Social Worker to work in the emergency response task area investigating reports of suspected child abuse or neglect. I left the department for personal reasons, but overall I enjoyed my time with the county. Co Workers were friendly and willing to help. You have to take responsibility for your own learning. I say that because yes, there are trainings, but even with the trainings you'll still have questions so don't be afraid to ask them.  I learned a lot in a short amount of time. Be ready to work, and to work hard. This line of work is challenging no doubt, but someone has got to do it so always remember your why's of why you got into this field to begin with. Your time management skills have got to be on point, and yes, you will be working overtime, even some Saturdays possibly. 

My favorite part about the job was connecting families to resources. 

My least favorite part of the job was showing up to people's homes announced. (But that's part of the job) 

My supervisor was awesome, very supportive &  I felt lucky because I know that's not always going to be the case. 

The health insurance can be pricey If you have a family, but as a single person I found them to be affordable. 

You accrue time off; the longer you work there the more time off you accrue. Paid holidays too! 

Also, there's retirement which I know isn't the best for new 
workers, but something is definitely better than nothing. 

I'd recommend County of Fresno for employment.


Not an ideal place for public service. Starting pay as a child support officer was $14.75/hr. After all the deductions, I took home less than what I made in retail. You have to have tough skin dealing with clients/customers. However, management and supervisors are super strict which is understood because as they lead and manage, they have caseloads as well. If you are not certified bilingual, which the county does not freely do for employees as budget is too tight for an extra 25 cents, do not translate or talk to non-English speaking customers. Got sat down and talked to for doing a Spanish call, talked to for asking for help from a coworker, and got talked to for not meeting quota. Supervisors will check your emails, listen in on phone calls, and look into your casework to make sure you are consistent. Besides the clients/customers, you are always paranoid about screwing up. Customer service is nothing compared to policies and procedures. You couldn’t spend a lifetime to understand the process. Ask any questions and you’re told to analyze and make decisions. Be on time, take your breaks on time and get back on time, and leave when it’s time to leave or you will get into trouble. No time for talking or  mingling. Do what you are paid to do.

You do not want to work here, EVER! Management uses harassment tactics, even when you are fulfilling your job duties and succeeding.  You are not talked to unless they need something from you.  There is no teamwork in this TEAM. The management treats everyone horrible and is an intensely toxic environment to work in.  If you can do it, you will pull your hair out just to get yourself to go to work. It is the worst management I have ever experienced.  They treat you like they own you and do not let you advance and hold you prisoner in their program because they pull every string and lie so that no one will hire you in other departments.  Their reach even extends to other counties so be assured, if you come here, you will only be asking for trouble to follow you to your next job, if you can get one after this.

Please if you have a pre-existing Medical Condition, make it known right away, This place promotes about mental health but provides no real help with resources. EAP is a joke and as is personnel, If you have the knack for sitting in a hum drum office with  awful management and co-workers that are far from peers, enjoy this job to its fullest. 
The only real enjoyable  benefits were gym discounts and Work Advantage discounts for movie tickets. Health care was a joke, got turned away by several Psychiatrists to show personnel I had a condition because my documents were not to their standards.

If all else, if you don't have great mental health have any kind of "hidden" disability. DO NOT WORK HERE. 




I worked in the call center and you have to meet a quota when taking calls, and you have to know everything. The job requires you to look through multiple government databases at a given time. Case loads are insane. If you don’t complete your assignments, that will get noted in your evaluations. When you are new they give you assignments and not teach you how to do it. For example, the supervisor will have you do an assignment about “out of state usage” and just say go. They will give you No instructions. Union fees are mandatory but you have to pay another fee to be included in that union. Terrible benefits. You pay for medical benefits every check and they are expensive.  The job is absolutely horrible. Management doesn’t care about your opinion. Too much information you have to learn for $14.75 an hour. High turnover rate. I don’t recommend this job at all.

This is not a place you want to work if you would like to move up. There is favoritism and lord forbid you get on someone bad side you will never move up or in any direction. They have work place bulling and nothing is done about it. You would think that the county would be a professional work environment but it’s far from it more like a slave camp you go to work and grin and bear it. High turnover due to the mistreatment of employees; New employees don't last long have to have tough skin to work there supervisor and upper management very disrespectful and degrading to employees. They have a union (SEU) but don't look for help from them their worthless. Good luck and learn to suck it up. If you know of anyone that works for the county ask questions before going into enslavement.

Assisting Families with parent education, supervising visits of families attempting to reunite with their children. Input case narratives into the computer system. Communicate daily with supervisor, about issues that may have occurred during visits. Communicate with co-workers about ways to improve the visitation unit. The hardest part of my job was the separation from kids and their parents at the conclusion of their supervised visits. The most enjoyable part of my job is witnessing parent growth within the families, and witnessing the greeting during the visit.

I can’t speak for everyone. I don’t know if every DSS department is like this but I’m only sharing what I’ve experienced. High turnover rate. After the switch of programs. Everyone is clueless to the work/program. My lead does not want to help at all. Everytime you ask for something , she’ll give you the “ go read the PPG’s”. Supervisor demands a lot. I’m not even 2 months in and I’m already doing interviews and all the task. Everyone tells me “wow they’re so quick to throw you at the deep end to see if you sink or swim”. Supervisor constantly tells me “it’s easy right, you got it? You know you work for the government right??” Constantly Intimidating me. Sad.. pay is no good for the work you do. I’m just here til I find something else. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Social worker 2 salaries reported	$57,486 per year
Senior attorney 10 salaries reported	$110,244 per year
Eligibility worker 1 salary reported	$46,891 per year
Mental health technician 6 salaries reported	$92,599 per year
Juvenile correctional officer 3 salaries reported	$24.10 per hour

Working at Fresno County: Company Overview and Reviews

Fresno County

Fresno County Ratings

Popular jobs at Fresno County

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected