A specialization in geriatrics took a surprising career turn after graduate school for Valencia McLaurin, LCSW. She is now the lead social worker at SSM Behavioral Health Services in St. Louis.
“The first job they offered me was in mental health,” McLaurin said. What she thought was going to be a short-term job turned out to be quite gratifying.
“I actually like working with mentally ill patients,” she said, “seeing them when they come into the hospital very sick and then to see them walking out the door doing a lot better – and knowing that I played a part in that.”
She is the social worker for an acute unit at SSM St. Mary’s Health Center in St. Louis, where McLaurin conducts assessments, family meetings, group therapy, discharge and planning. In addition to her own caseload, the licensed clinical social worker supervises social workers, a case manager and a recreational therapist.
The behavioral health unit has 46 patients. She said the need for mental health services is so great, the unit stays full.
“When I discharge one patient,” she said, “someone is already in the bed.”
When a patient comes into the hospital and is considered a threat to self or others, they are admitted to the behavioral health unit, McLaurin said. “A social worker sees a patient within 24 hours of admission,” she said.
At the initial contact, McLaurin finds out what brought them into the unit.
“I start working with the patient to get a plan of action – a plan of care for when they leave the hospital, because hospital stays can be five to seven days,” McLaurin said. “We start on day one to determine what would best meet this patient’s needs to transition them back to the community safely.”
Patients and former patients alike rely on social workers to get them connected to the care they need, whether it is medication, a drug treatment program, a psych unit bed or community resources to get through day-to-day living.
‘You’re still working with them,” she said. “If I don’t do it then, they’re going to come back in the hospital.”
Emerging from recent economic changes affecting the population is a new clientele in need of services and support.
“People that 10 years ago you really didn’t have to worry about, now I see more clients like that: people who have never been homeless before, have lost jobs and everything,” she said. “Right now with the chemical dependency issues, it has increased in the St. Louis area, and we get a lot of geriatric patients.”
McLaurin, a Gary, Indiana native, came to St. Louis thanks to a Whitney M. Young Jr. full scholarship to attend the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University.
Here is where she is building her career. It is neither too small nor too large. St. Louis is just right.
“This is a good in between. It isn’t too busy; it isn’t too slow,” she said. “When I came here, I thought this was a perfect fit for me.”
McLaurin said the lack of resources makes it ever more challenging to navigate the mental health network of services available in the area.
“A lot of times patients come in, not so much sick, but a lot of the time they are trying to function in a community but they could not find out how to navigate that system,” McLaurin explained. “They come to the hospital and we try to help them get through the tape.”
Trying to get appointments when there are no openings are understandable struggles.
“If I have a hard time doing it, I know how it is for somebody who has mental illness issues,” she said.
Previously, in St. Louis, McLaurin worked for St. Alexius Hospital as a clinical social worker and an acting lead social worker, and at Epworth Youth Emergency Services/Epworth TLP as a youth advocate.
McLaurin earned a master of social work from Washington University, specializing in gerontology and management. Her bachelor of arts was conferred at St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, where she majored in psychology with a minor in marketing.
McLaurin attends Grace Church in Maryland Heights.
