On November 22nd, Alison wrote a comment on the blog post #375 entitled, A Social Worker's Challenge. There she introduced herself.
Following from that on November 27th, Ray Ferris responded to Alison.There were a few others who engaged her that day on Blog #380. Since then for the past several days she and others have continued to interact.
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| Alison |
Alison told us that she is a mother and
that she is a fourth year student with a child welfare specialization
at University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford. She happened upon
my blog while researching CAPP and Risk Assessment for her class
work. She left her informative comment after browsing and reading
blog content for an hour. She has chosen child protection as her
career track. She knows this is not easy work but she believes that
it is honourable work. Very openly and honestly she spoke of her own
ethical concerns about aspects of the work in which she will be
engaged. She told us that she has received good counsel from her
father who is himself a social worker with MCFD with a twenty year
service record. She knows that there is a high attrition rate among
social workers. Child protection certainly has a high attrition rate
as attested by a social worker who as a guest instructor in one of Alison's recent
classes stated that she has chosen to move to another province because of
disappointment with Ministry changes over the past few years. When
speaking of the challenges of the work in which she will be employed,
Alison wrote, “There are no black and white cases, they are all
painted in shades of gray. However, I chose this work because I
believe that someone has to stand for children. I think that,
sometimes, standing for children means standing for their parents,
supporting their parents, developing their parents. (After all, what
is the full name of MCFD? The Ministry for children and family
DEVELOPMENT.)”
She thanked me for acknowledging the
complexities of the process for keeping children safe in that day's blog entitled 'A Social Worker's Challenge' and then she
said, “I will endeavour to live up to the challenge you describe
in this post, to be willing to admit when I have made the wrong
decision. I think I'm not the only social worker out there willing to
take up this challenge...”
I believed hers was a significant
comment and because I wanted people with a jaded impression of all
social workers to be encouraged, I invited Alison to write to me
personally and she did that. I asked for and received her permission
to write this information as a blog post. In that exchange she wrote,
“It is difficult to not be discouraged after reading some of the
comments placed on your blog, it seems that many people lump social
workers and child protection workers and politicians and MCFD into
one category. I personally see many competent child protection
workers, some of whom are trained as social workers, some of whom are
not, and I see a few poor practitioners. I also see that many good
workers are constrained by the ministry, by their managers (who are
no longer protected by a union, and can be fired for not following
the 'party line'), and forced to do things they don't want to do.”
Tomorrow I will publish another post that features Alison's thoughts. She represents people who are our best hope for family development within MCFD and responsible child welfare.
