Perhaps our social work education is preparing well motivated people to be effective managers. That takes a program only so far but not far enough. I believe that the critical need which exists within the Ministry of Children and Family Development is ‘leadership.’ I am distinguishing ‘leadership’ from ‘management.’ We have regions and teams that are being managed and some of them perhaps managed effectively. Make no mistake that some of the sad and broken family stories stem from parents whose own lives are so messed up that they have failed to function well as parents. Yet there are numerous other family stories that spin out from teams of social workers who have not been led well, by example or principle. That should be our concern. We have a leadership development crisis.
The Ministry has grown steadily and so large that developing leaders have not kept pace. We have continued to reply upon the old method of on the job experience and development to produce leaders for child welfare and child protection. That assumption is no longer plausible. It has not been working well for some time. The organizations that are making it today have prioritized executive leadership development rather than assuming it happens within the ranks as people are recognized and promoted. There must be a definite aim within MCFD to build the capabilities of leaders in the sometimes turbulent business of child welfare.
The solution is not one-day or weekend seminars. Most of these are management focused anyway. Earlier I said that I distinguish between management and leadership. We need leaders who have learned how to lead. I insist that leadership skills learned through the on the job experience and hard knocks are insufficient for the challenges of the present MCFD demands. Leaders move well beyond management to vision and mission and plans. That is what is needed now. Can you imagine a Ministry of Children that is not merely satisfied that it has provided for a secure ‘today’ for a child, but is envisioning the compassionate means by which to retool a parent, a family, a community for all of that child’s ‘tomorrows’? What has been going on here is a narrow functional-clinical perspective, afraid to invest itself in the lives of family members for fear of making mistakes. The easiest route is adversarial. Take the child. Let the parents fight back and fend for themselves. That last rejoinder is stated too harshly. It expresses the way it has seemed to me. Capable of managing but unfit to lead. Social working teams need to be led well by example, not merely managed.
So friends, here it is. Leaders are comprised of competence and character. This combination generates courage that can create vision, challenge the status quo and even take risks. That is, to have the courage to do what one believes to be right, in keeping with character, rather than what has typically been deemed to be convenient and familiar and expected. Courage also admits shortcomings and even failure because such a leader knows that leadership lessons accrue from failures as well as successes.
Leadership comes through experience not through book learning. Managing comes through book learning and fails when the manager fails to recognize his/her lack of experience. What is needed in both scenarios is passion for the job and the people that they are impacting. Many times those who care don't seek management or leadership roles as red tape and paperwork take them away from those that they are trying to help.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the issues come from the people at the top that send the message downstream, that they are the boss and if you don't follow them then start looking for another job. The insecurities of those at the "top" cause chaos with the whole system. There are only a select few (usually young and just starting out or older close to retirement) people that would dare challenge the system. When people become afraid of losing their jobs for doing something that may be right, things start to become stale and more set. Do what I am told, mind my own business, don't question and then I can hopefully keep my job. This is not progressive but the exact opposite. Things only change when someone at the top decides they will. Most times if they are challenged they become more entrenched in their ways. This is not good leadership but then, are those in power real leaders or people striving to become powerful and noticed. Do they have the skill sets to lead those below or are they just looking to get further ahead? Unfortunately this is our society and our government and it will take miracles to get it changed.
MCFD appears to be a fine example of the tail wagging the dog.
ReplyDeleteThere are numerous entrenched workers who have over a dozen years experience. Removal protection workers are a small subset of the total , are quite likely the worst of the bunch that defy leadership.
The outcome of this brand of investigation workers, who do not even have to have social worker designation, are the people that decide the type of intervention is to be used, if at all.
The choises are to remove to foist lengthy and 'services' of questionable value on hapless parents, impose supervision, or simple referral to community resources. Such a difficult job, I'm sure.
With the rumored 30,000 calls to MCFD yearly, I doubt there is enough work to keep all these 2600 worker bees busy with 'clients.'
Anon 8:24 - If you say so. I will urge you to do some homework. You can start with a comparison of the BCYC and BSW degrees - including the identical child welfare specialization and practicums these two degrees must complete to be child protection workers - not to mention the courses one must take once hired. You can start there and then you might revise your statement above. Or you can remain cynical without a knowledgeable foundation beyond your own bias.
ReplyDeleteSocial workers embedded within schools, health care systems and other non-protection works likely make better use of their education than do child protection workers.
ReplyDeleteChild protection work is tightly scripted and streamlined to produce, for the most part, very predictable results. Removal of children, and expenditure of vast amounts of tax dollars. This is ALL child protection is about, nothing more. Prevention and remedial services BEFORE removal are the very last thing on the mind of today's MCFD social workers. This services offerred after the fact are mere show to make it seem as if parents are being educated, elevated, but certainly not punished.
There is very little room for flexibility in child protection work that social worker's skill set would appear to demand. You will often hear social workers state "we are bound by legislation... we would return sooner if we could, but...."
For what social workers actually do, a week's training is sufficient. Just the same that foster home providers get. The Provincial requirments requiring a degree is just for show to make it appear as if the talents that come with this degree are actually employed by MCFD.
I put a worker on the stand in B.C. Supreme Court to ask the duration of training for supervision work, and she stated "one day" and this involved sitting in on another workers watching her fill in the forms. I asked her starting salary was, and that was $23.00 per hour. The other three workers I put on the stand hid behind privacy legislation to avoid answering questions. I asked them their age just to piss them off, so they could demonstrate to the court their haughtly attitude. Typical social workers really are loaded with a holier than thou condescending attitude.
The one worker I questioned left after a year, stating she found a better match for her University degree. This is one of the nicer individuals I've met.
Perhaps audio transcripts of a child protection worker conducting their "investigation" would be of more use than citing the paths by which these workers acquire their pedigree. Then Anon 10:22PM can describe to me the various skills obtained through university was employed.
I did acquire the complete set of text books and course notes of a social worker, some 7,000+ pages, still I have not much clue what is taught how it applies to child protection work.
It does appear there is a huge amount of discussion of social engineering and justification for social work and explaining the theory behind why people who need such social service act as they do. This seems to be a prevalent thread throughout this documentation.
I do know, that the questioning style of the dozen or so social workers I have met is far short of what police do. Officers who do not have a degree and only need 6 months of boot camp to become an officer, so why do they do a better job, handle far more incident reports, and close files far more quickly?
Social worker documentation is uniformely atrocious (besides them writing in all capital letters in intake reports as if they are shouting all the time). The 30-day investigative turnaround times are widely ignored. Risk assessments are unregulated character assasinations.
Why is a social worker degree necessary when they don't use their skills and end up farming out the decision making process to the courts, PCA's, external counselling services and doctors?
These very few hundred or so investigative workers are the lynchpin of this farce of a child protection system system. Their recommendation is to determine if children are in need of protection or not. After this decision is made, the lower-class front-line social workers who do the actual babysitting have to deal with the day to day angst of parents and children.
No one looks at the quality of the work done, such as asking parents and children if they were asked the appropriate questions or gained value from services rendered. No one does any follow-up studies after intervention ends.