Observers have become critics of child protection workers and their
superiors and not for insignificant reasons. Too many judgements, too
many actions, too many interactions reveal a service that has developed,
not a bad rap but a bad reputation. I know some social workers and I am
convinced that they have chosen this career with altruistic vision.
They want to help people. They want to be effective and they want to
employ all that is good in the human spirit to lift that which is weak
among their community members. It is to these that I direct some questions which I believe to be appropriate and relevant to good child protection work. They are questions that the child protection workers should ask in each and every case to which they are assigned.
The questions are not my own but were presented by some social scientist whose name is lost to me.
1. What is my distinctive role in this child's life? In other words, why am I here? Why this question? Because the social worker has a distinct aptitude, role and responsibility that is different from that of the police officer or teacher. Those people with other skill sets and professions are not social workers. So, why am I involved in this case?
2. What am I observing and to what am I listening as I monitor this case, this family, and the interplay of family members? What can I smell or perceive that may call for a possible assessment and inform that assessment. What dangers are apparent or what hygiene issues meet my eye?
3. Are there other workers who have been involved in this case? If there were some others, what were their observations and what do the case files already indicate? Can other workers assist my understanding with relevant information?
4. If I decide that there is cause for concern in this case, what are the things that I believe require change in order to relieve the concern? What action plan transparent to all the adults involved, can result in the best outcome and what time frame is best?
What do you think of those questions? Oh, are you saying a very loud DUHHH!!
Are you thinking that most social workers are already asking questions such as these rather instinctively? Apparently not all! Not all social workers have thought this way consistently, otherwise a family such as the Baynes would not have endured an entire year without their children, and then a second year and a third and a fourth. Four years of separation, children from parents, children in foster care, parents seeking in every way to demonstrate their parental capacity.
Now Derek Hoare has been separated from his autistic daughter Ayn for almost one year, since June 16, 2011. Is this to be the first of several years as well?
The questions need to be simplified and distilled down to those that capture a core problem.
ReplyDeleteThe one question I can ask is why are there more removals per year (minimum 1-year incarceration) than there are supervision orders (3-6 month expiry)?
The basic tenant of the CFCSA is '...no less disruptive action before removal...' Why do workers jump immediately to removal before even considering services and supervision orders first?
Social workers are as generic and interchangeable as fast food employees, but far more dangerous.
Imagine a burger-flipper deciding for the customer (a child) by viewing their physical appearance (too fat?) they change the order and deliver a healthy salad instead. This event would become a national news story and become viral on Youtube if it happened.
I asked workers some of these questions. The generic answer is 'we do what we do to keep your children safe according to the CFCSA.' Under that umbrella, no matter WHAT they do, they consider is 'good' for the child. (Parent's, well, that is another story. They are essentially convicted perpetrators, no longer parents if social workers have been assigned to their case.)
Questions beyond that, you are then accused of attempting to micro-manage their duties in how they conduct their job.
There is practically a 1:1 relationship to a removed child (and associated family members) and a social worker employee in B.C. (2,600 workers in B.C., 3,000 children removed yearly).
There are 3,300 foster homes. Social worker time is spent preparing for removal, or dealing with the aftermath of removal and preparing for court and arranging visitations. Once children are permanently in custody, or long periods of time elapse between court date, social worker interaction is very much reduced.
The teacher-child ratio is very much different case. There are 550,000 students in B.C. and 30,000 teachers. Yet, teachers spend at least 5 hours each weekday with students. Social workers interact no more than a few minutes a week with parent or child.
The question to these workers that I would be asking is, exactly what are they doing with their time if it is not spending that with the people they purport to serve?
My thought is these workers DO ask themselves these questions continuously. They know the correct answer to provide, so the exercise of their employment is to somehow make it appear the duty they are charged with is so vitally important to our society, the annoying details of how they go about that task becomes a distant secondary consideration.
So, the silent answer to all these questions is, you had better shut up and let them do their jobs. That primary job is removing and "caring" for children at exhorbitant cost to the public.
Interesting list of questions, however they're not exactly the questions I consider when working with families in a protective capacity. My questions are informed by Andrew Turnell and Steve Edwards' work, Signs of Safety (http://www.signsofsafety.net/).
ReplyDeleteI would edit your list of questions as follows:
1. What is my distinctive role in this child's life? In other words, why am I here?
What's the danger statement? What was the unsafe thing that happened that we don't want to see happen again? This is more about the caregiver than the child.
2. What am I observing and to what am I listening as I monitor this case, this family, and the interplay of family members? What can I smell or perceive that may call for a possible assessment and inform that assessment. What dangers are apparent or what hygiene issues meet my eye?
I'm done with danger & risks by now. Now I'm asking, what are the exceptions to risk in this family? What are the strengths, how do they already come up with solutions?
3. Are there other workers who have been involved in this case? If there were some others, what were their observations and what do the case files already indicate? Can other workers assist my understanding with relevant information?
Sure, past workers interpretations are important, but more important to me is, how did the family, the community experience those other workers? Did the caregivers find the other workers helpful? If not, maybe I want to form my own opinion, independently of past negative biases. Also, maybe the family doesn't have the same problem as in the past, or it's less severe. Maybe the children are older now.
4. If I decide that there is cause for concern in this case, what are the things that I believe require change in order to relieve the concern? What action plan transparent to all the adults involved, can result in the best outcome and what time frame is best?
This is a good premise for ongoing work with the family, but it's missing the family's input, other than it be transparent to them. What changes can we agree on? What actions does the family want to take? If the family doesn't agree, how could there possibly be lasting change? I think of this as aligning with the family.
I did my Signs of Safety training with Ktunaxa Kinbasket CFSS, from the Cranbrook area (http://www.signsofsafety.net/british-columbia).