Episode 6: Broken Systems, Impossible Choices, and the Social Workers In Between

What happens when someone is medically ready to leave the hospital but has nowhere safe to go?Nick D'Agostino is a licensed social worker in New York City. Every day, he stands in that impossible space: between a system that says patients are ready to discharge and a reality that has no room for them.He's worked with nine-year-olds in foster care, unhoused people navigating the court system, and patients in psychiatric units whose families can't take them back. He's the person making the calls no one else wants to make.When a 22-year-old in Queens was shot by police during a mental health crisis, it raised the question Nick's entire career has been building toward: when someone is in crisis, who do we send?This is a conversation about broken systems, impossible choices, and the social workers trying to hold it together.