Newsletter: End of Year Checklist

We’re almost there! Here’s hoping that your team throws a great holiday party, and more importantly, gives you some well-deserved time off to relax.

Today’s newsletter will be your checklist to guide you through the end-of-year casework tasks that will let you and your team start 2024 with a clean slate and fresh ideas. Pick and choose what works best for you and your team, and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions—I’m always reachable at anne@popvox.org.

Happy holidays!

Anne Meeker
Deputy Director
POPVOX Foundation

Inventory Your Caseload

The end of the year is a great time to go through your caseload and see if there are any cases that can be moved forward or closed out.

• Are there cases that you’re ready to close out? Our guide to closing cases includes a checklist for closing out cases and sample form letters.

• Are there any cases where you’re stuck, or are you lost in the weeds of a huge caseload? Our guide to redistricting has a checklist of information that should be in every case, including goal statements and action plans (page 7). This is a great practice for every caseworker to run through every open case for quality control at least once a year.

Celebrate the Wins

You’ve done incredible work this year! And your comms team is probably bugging you for some statistics on casework to share in a year-end review anyway.

• Take some time to go through your team’s CRM to pull statistics on your work. We have a guide to data-driven casework with some tips on what to include and how to measure it.

• Don’t forget the stories! Write up a list that you can share internally with the rest of your team or externally with your constituents. Sharing these stories with your colleagues is important for helping other parts of your team understand the importance of casework.

• End of the year is also a great time to thank the agency liaisons you’ve most valued—a signed card from your team and/or a short note from your Member can go a long way. We have some suggestions for maintaining your agency relationships here.

Take Care of Yourself and Your Team

You can only show up for your constituents if you’re taking care of yourselves and each other.

• Our conversation with the Schwartz Center for Compassion in Healthcare had some great tips for teams to understand burnout and check in to help prevent and manage it.

  • And Senate friends - don’t miss the EAP Caseworker Director Forum 12-1pm EST Dec. 19, and Caseworker Forum 3-4pm EST Dec. 19. More info on Webster.

• This is sexy: it’s federal employee benefit season! Don’t forget to shop healthcare plans and check on your TSP.

• The US saw 25 domestic disasters with more than $1bn in losses in 2023 alone—so it really pays for teams to plan ahead for crises. Take some time with your team to do a little bit of tabletop planning on how you will respond in a disaster—and yes, that includes government shutdown planning.

Set Goals for Next Year

Casework is always in motion, from changing agency procedures to new tech. The end of the year is a great time to assess your or your team’s work, and figure out some new things to try in 2024.

• How are your team’s constituent-facing processes working? Try a journey map exercise to troubleshoot any persistent pain points, or dive in on how you are safeguarding your constituents’ information. Our guide to data-driven casework also covers how to evaluate what’s working.

• Are there projects on your wishlist that you haven’t been able to tackle? Consider how you can integrate interns and fellows into your team’s work, or experiment with House-approved (still waiting on the Senate!) AI tools to do things like first-draft correspondence or prep hearing summaries.

• How can casework insights contribute to your team’s legislative agenda? A great place to start is talking with your team about casework priorities in the FY25 appropriations process. And don’t miss our conversation with Jennifer Pahlka on why casework experience is essential for fixing agencies.

News You Can Use: The Very Short Roundup

That’s a lot on your plate! But there are still a few things worth keeping an eye on in casework news:

Member office casework transitions

Roll Call has an in-depth piece on how Member offices navigate transitions between Members. We hear that CHA is working on some fixes for the problem of outgoing Members not transferring data to incoming Members and we’ll hear more soon.

Have you been part of an office that didn’t receive casework info from your predecessor? We’d love to chat! Reach out at anne@popvox.org.

Congratulations Team Ricketts!

We’ve been watching a lot of press advisories about office hours from the Senator Ricketts [R, NE] team, and now we know why. Congratulations to that team on hosting office hours in all 93 Nebraska counties. That’s a huge achievement!

New family reunification parole for Ecuadorian citizens

DHS announced a new process to allow certain Ecuadorian I-130 beneficiaries to seek advance authorization to travel to the US.

YIKES: 120,000 veterans “lost” in online VA systems

VA acknowledged that more than 120,000 veterans attempting to use online platforms to file for benefits have been “stonewalled” by technical problems. VA has promised fixes soon.

New: Whistleblowers 101

New from the House Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds: a 101 one-pager on whistleblowers. Great for sharing with your interns!

We also welcomed Jennifer Pahlka, author of Recoding America, to talk about why casework experience is vital to fixing government for the 21st century. This was a validating, inspiring conversation about what’s really happening at agencies, and how casework expertise can help Congress become a better “gardener” of agencies that work.