How quickly a CP worker adjusts to the demanding rigor of the job is uncertain. It is documented however, that there has been much difficulty for many years in recruiting and retaining competent child protection workers.
The rate of attrition in child protection workers informs us that the associated stresses of this job and the host of lousy outcomes are not easily coped with. And when there is high turnover, the remaining workers become overloaded. Miscommunication and mistakes occur when a child’s case is handed to a new caseworker.
This job includes allegation investigation, crisis intervention, counselling and assisting parents with planning for their children, advocating for families with regard to needed services, preparing and serving as a witness in court.
The effective CP worker is required to have a first-rate knowledge of child development and family system theory, and must be thoroughly acquainted with the CFSA and the available community services. The CP worker is expected to have excellent crisis intervention skills, communication and written skills, diagnostic and assessment skills. The worker is required to maintain client records in accordance with Ministry Standards including case notes, plans of service, plans of care, social histories and other required documentation. The CP worker must respond immediately to a crisis and therefore is required to have excellent time management and organizational skills to accommodate to fluctuating workloads. The CP worker has authority and must be comfortable to use it while focused upon making good decisions.
I am unclear whether anyone outside the immediate family of CP workers does a regular performance assessment. The Representative of Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond has not given approving reports over the past couple of years and she is considered the watchdog. Now that Mary McNeil and Stephen Brown have taken on the roles of Minister and Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, they have reinstated a Director of Child Welfare and this is to be a position where accountability is seriously considered. I would like to believe that some of the recurrent social work errors and criticisms which have been noted in the past will be addressed by Dir. Doug Hughes. I would like to think that the quality of investigations and assessments that has been faulted before will be improved. Time will tell but that time takes an enormous toll upon families still caught in the system.
If child protection workers think their job is hard, what about the poor kids and parents who's lives they have destroyed? It's MUCH harder for them. I once heard it's not uncommon for the workers to only last a year, once they find out what their job really entails. If they have any conscience or any soul or human decency whatsoever they cannot last long in this job making a living destroying families. If they DO last several years, they are heartless.How can they sleep at night knowing they get paid to and are making a living destroying innocent families?
ReplyDeleteAnon 4:29 PM
ReplyDelete"If child protection workers think their job is hard, what about the poor kids and parents who's lives they have destroyed? It's MUCH harder for them."
This is very true.. if you are thrust into having to deal with Child Protection Services, even if it is because of a misdiagnosis or malicious false accusation, you will find that you have worse than a difficult job. You will find that you have a nightmare job, and you can't quit like CPS workers can.
You will find that you have become a SLAVE, needing to attend meetings after meetings after meetings day after day, week after week. You will be running ragged having been forced into slavery with no time to work at your regular 9-5 job, since CPS has forced you to attend meetings and courses and supervised visits (if you are "lucky" enough to have them with your children) and counselling sessions and court related matters and more. No time for regular work, no time to sleep, no time for anything any more. No time for life. Welcome to the new order, the New Artificial Reality.
Every day you will be running, being forced to be a "client", a captive client, an enslaved client of CPS, of the system. Many extra hoops will be created for you to jump through (REGARDLESS of whether they are justified or not), so that annual CPS and other agency budgets can continue year after year at your expense.
Is it any wonder families are destroyed after being put through this often unnecessary predatory parasitic wringer?
It is such a difficult and hope-wrecking experience to go through that one often wonders if life is worth living when in the middle of this.
After after going through even a small version of this, one can personally understand why some people collapse under the strain of it all and give up on life altogether. Yes some do not have the strength to hang on.
What a price for society to pay for the "difficult job" of suffering injustice at the hands of those who callously order and deliver their "services" to the involuntarily captive slaves of the system, paid for by the unwitting taxpayer in general.
In addition to all the families who have had their children taken by Child Protective Services, there are many parents and families who have been unimaginably tortured by the false and misleading "evidence" of "experts" such as Charles Randall Smith, who played a very important role in the conviction of innocent parents whose children died, it turned out, of natural causes. These parents not only lost a child, and spent time in prison, branded as a baby or child killer (that would NOT be easy time), but they also lost whatever other children they had, as they were adopted out. Even when these parents were proved innocent, they still did not get their adopted-out children back. Their lives have been destroyed and they have suffered so much.
ReplyDeleteYet we still see the same thing happening, right here in BC, where the Baynes have had their family ripped apart with ridiculous and false "evidence."
Here is an excerpt from an article in today's news that gives some idea of the horrific damage these "experts" in Shaken Baby Syndrome can do:
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...(Tammy) Marquardt was convicted in 1995 and spent 14 years in prison before being granted bail in 2009. They weren't easy years, Lockyer said. Labelled a baby killer, the diminutive woman was a pariah among her fellow inmates and attempted suicide, Lockyer said.
The judge said he hopes that Marquardt can now move forward with her life, which includes her nine-month-old daughter.
"Nothing I can say to you today will repair the damage that has been caused to you," Brown said. "Nothing I can say will bring back your son Kenneth, for whom you still grieve. I wish my words could do that."
Brown told Marquardt he couldn't imagine what she went through. Outside court, Marquardt tried to put it into words.
"Have somebody rip your heart out and hold it in front of your face and just have them squeeze the life out of it," she said. "That's the only way I can express that kind of a pain. It's torturous."
At the time of her conviction, Marquardt was an impoverished young mother thought to have limited parenting skills and the Crown worked on a theory she strangled her son in a moment of frustration, Lockyer said in court.
"Tammy Marquardt was essentially an easy target," he said. "She was an easy target for Dr. Smith and I fear she became an easy target for the justice system."
Once considered an unassailable expert on child forensic pathology, an inquiry found that errors in Smith's work were responsible, in part, for several people being wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for killing children.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5iCJsaMWjnMazZ7QAcOfju7ng0JVg?docId=7075765
My friend lost her grandaughter. Her daughter had a fight with her boyfriend, (the child's father). Now it is a very aggressive policy in all cases of domestic disturbance to take the children into care. Then, it is wondered why the families don't seek help (??)
ReplyDeleteThe daughter was under a supervision order, but she was still very much in love with her boyfriend. I am not even certain how bad the fight was. They also had the mom pinned for 'mental illness'. Since MCFd tried desperately to pin that on me (unsucessfully), I know it is not a real thing in most cases.
Sorry, got cut off. Then it was reported that the dad saw the child and the child went to foster care. This is a Vancouver story, a real ongoing story. The grandma wanted to get custody of her grandaughter. She is still not able. Even though she is employed in health care and is a good person. They had a good SW and I felt confident it would be resolved. But, that Sw went on stress leave. So many of those who are complassionate quit or go on stress leave.
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