You have certainly chosen one of the most challenging jobs on the planet. Saving children from toxic homes & helping them heal and develop the coping skills necessary to live a functioning life. How do you manage to deal with so many families (and children) at one time?
We all live with the troubled institution that is Child Protection and the lack of awareness, concern and resources our community makes available to abused and neglected children.
Burnout in your profession is high, salaries low & as the Casey Foundation pointed out when Dee Wilson delivered his report to the Hennepin County Commissioners, not much trust for your co-workers or management. Dee Wilson painted a pretty negative picture of the working atmosphere for most social workers.
It hurts me that the 90 minute audio session has been removed from the Hennepin County Commissioners website. I listened to it once and it was gone. I did attend the session, but it's hard to remember all that was said - and some very blunt truths were delivered to our commissioners.
To be clear, I am pro social worker. When there are failures, they stem from the top. The people making decisions about where to spend money, what works and what does not work.
It is the second note that I made from Dee Wilson's presentation that I wish to make us all appreciate. If we can over come our fear and turn Dee's words into action, abused and neglected children would finally have a voice in this community and we could all speak more intelligently about the core issues and better solutions.
Paraphrasing Dee - Social Workers fear speaking out about the conditions they work under, the children and families they work with, the lack of resources and wicked problems they face every day.
Child suicides and suicidal behaviors, rapes and even a 7 year old girl's prostitution go unspoken of in my experience. Mr Wilson drew attention to the fact that most of this fear comes from an unnecessary over emphasis on privacy rights which he called a red herring and he suggested that this overcompensation is working against the best interests of the children this policy was supposed to protect.
KARA was dis-invited to our second annual Brutal Truths and Best Practices forum by Century College a few years back when a DHS person was asked just that question (by me) "is it true that social workers are trained/required not to speak about their work outside of their work?"
At the time I received a passionate explanation about social worker turnover and children's privacy, but looking back I see how counter productive that policy is for the children, the public and policy makers. It's not about privacy, its about a lack of transparency and accountability and a desire to not rock the boat. Dee Wilson indicated that names did not need to be mentioned, only conditions, resources and problems associated with Child Protection.
The only way the public and policy makers can know the condition of Child Protection and child safety in this community is if someone does speak about it.
There simply has to be a way this information gets out. About the only information the public and policy makers get about these issues is when a child dies a horrible death or is found near dead and the reaction to crucify parents, foster parents and social workers runs its course.
If it were not for the Star Tribune and Brandon Stahl reporting on the death of 4 year old Eric Dean, there would have been no "Colossal Failure" remarks from our Governor Dayton, no Task Force on Child Protection, no recommendations from the Task Force or Casey Foundation and it would still be illegal for social workers to use a families past reports of child abuse when evaluation new reports of child abuse.
Eric Dean died after 15 reports of child abuse were made and 4 MN counties screened out 90% of all child abuse reports. 30 years ago, Lois Jergens went on to adopt 4 more children after the torture and murder of 4 year old Dennis Jergens. Not much has changed.
I've borrowed the following statement (with a few changes) from another KARA discussion by a practicing social worker who thinks as I do.
Daniel LCSW
Working conditions and child protection results can change IF...
"As a collective, social workers stand up and demand a change. A strike..., protesting, educating, etc.
Part of the problem is too many social workers, (usually the young, inexperienced, and single) believe it is against social worker ethics to stand and fight for themselves or their child clients. SW'ers also fear they will loose their job if they speak up and if they strike they would worry about neglecting their clients. Standing up now will help clients in the long run..... change can happen if we start advocating for ourselves."
Before you condemn Daniel's robust thoughts, consider this; When nurses recognize that hospitals have seriously understaffed to the point of harming patients they strike. The threat of a strike sends administrators to look for better answers.
You deal with the same life and death issues that nurses do. The children you work with every day either will make it into adulthood and lead normal lives or they will become like the 80% of youth aging out of foster care, dysfunctional adults.
Until you, the only people close enough to the issues to speak about them cogently, can articulate where the problems are and start telling other people, the institutional failures and child tragedies you watch unfold everyday, will continue.
Thank you for the work you do. I appreciate how hard it is.
Please pass this article around to your fellow Social Workers and let's start this conversation.
All adults are the protectors of all children. Invisiblechildren.org
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