I am a social worker and I was in child protective services. It is not like what you see on Law and Order. We do not cackle while we grab wailing kids from the arms of screaming parents. We do not ineptly disappear for months on end while our kids rot in some faraway foster home that nobody seems to be able to locate. We do not get rich “snatching babies” and we do not get commission for each kid we take. What we do is navigate an understaffed, underfunded, and completely misunderstood system in order to do the best we can by the most vulnerable kids (and parents) that we have. Sometimes we have to take the kids. Usually we don’t –- only about half of all reports are investigated, about a fifth of those investigations result in a substantiated allegation, and a tiny number of those substantiations result in a kid being removed from their home. And it’s hard to take a kid. It’s really damn hard to take a kid and it should be hard to take a kid because it’s serious and we shouldn’t be doing it all willy nilly. Foster care is serious. Treatment plans are serious. Court hearings are serious. Submitting an affidavit swearing that a child cannot be kept safe in the care of their parents is serious. Going up to the witness stand and testifying that someone abused and/or neglected their child while they and their attorney are staring at you is serious. Very interesting read. I am always fascinated by the many point of views each person that has worked as a Child Welfare Social Worker brings to the table.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:38:13 +0000
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