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Seventh Topic: Child Welfare
Mar. 17th, 2008 11:38 amOkay, how about your life in CPS? What's the very worst case your dealt with? What's the best case?
Aaah, child welfare. When I lived in Ohio, I spent a brief amount of time (after we were all "restructured" out of work at the homeless shelter) working for an organization that acted as a contract agency for Franklin County Children's Services. Basically, Ohio was trying to save money by contracting out child welfare casework. These contract organizations would get $x per case and the organization's goal was to close the case before the money ran out.
I'm not even kidding.
I was pretty lucky in my child welfare life in that I didn't see anything horrible. I didn't see any awful awful abuse or any kind of really scary neglect. I imagine those cases are pretty rare. I had a lot of stupid things like "educational neglect" (when a kid misses too many days of school) and I had a number of cases with teens in the juvenile justice system. And then there were the cases where the parents hate each other so they call FCCS on each other every other day and talk about how mom is taking the baby to the crack house or dad is beating the kid in the car. And I would have to go, EVERY TIME, and investigate even though I know it was a lie.
Because of the high turnover of employees, I had very few cases that were mine from case opening. Someone would quit and all of the cases would have to be reshuffled. Some of my tougher cases (mostly the unruly teens sent out to foster homes in the middle of nowhere so they would stay out of trouble, or the teens in the residential programs) had been passed on so many times it was out. of. control. The records were a total disaster and someone would quit and everyone would try to pick and choose the least messy cases. I always got suckered into taking what no one else wanted. Like the teenage sex offender. And the girl who just cursed everyone out and ran away all the time (which means that the on-call worker ALWAYS had to deal with this girl and therefore always hated you). One time my friend (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahaubry) was on call and of course SC ran away again. Because she is MEAN, she called me at like 3am to say that SC was downtown. She came to pick me up. Man, SC was surprised to see me there! She actually kind of liked me so it was like being busted. Heh.
The best case ever wasn't even my case, it was Sarah's. For a while when I was training, I shadowed her so I got to know a lot of her cases. (Of course, when she quit it meant that I got most of her cases.) One of her families was an aunt who was fostering her niece and who also had a daughter a similar age (both teenagers). The aunt was a big old butch lesbian who was also incredibly inappropriate (I love that) and we would go over and she would just start trash talking people. She was that woman who would say anything. The first time I came to her house, she asked Sarah later, "So. Your friend. She gay?" She also was known to open the door when Sarah and I were laughing about something and be all, "What are you bitches cackling about now?" She was just really open and really awesome and I loved her. It wasn't a great case from a worker standpoint (M's mom was nowhere in sight and she was really just riding out until she was 18) but it was a good time all around.
The worst case I had was this awful and sticky sexual abuse case. (Aren't they all?) Basically a little girl (maybe 10? 11?) told someone that her dad had molested her, and that person called it in. By the time I got the case, the whole family had worked on this girl so hard that she was talking about how she made it up. She was living with her aunt and uncle because of all of this (dad was homeless and technically didn't live in the home but was always there) and even THEY didn't believe her, but used the opportunity to tell mom how she didn't know how to raise her kids, blah blah. She had two brothers and they were furious that dad couldn't come around, so they kept saying awful things to her about how she was a liar. This poor girl was just a freaking MESS and no one wanted to realize that they were totally effing her up by not supporting her. I mean, she reports sexual abuse and no one wants to take her to counseling, no one wants to tell her dad to stay away, nothing. She was just this poor, sad, broken little thing floating around her aunt and uncle's house, picking up after their kids and failing out of school. Going to court for that case was a total mess because the dad was always disheveled and rambling, and the mom had mental illness big time and just couldn't see past her own existence, and then there were there two big angry brothers, then the uncle who kept telling his sister she was a bad mom, and all of the lawyers (mom's public defender, dad's public defender, the aunt and uncle got a lawyer, the daughter had an advocate, we had our lawyer, etc.). I was never so glad to hand a case over. Bleh.
I also had a case where dad was always mad at mom whenever she would go on a date, so if she went on a date (they were not together) he would ALWAYS call in a report on her. At least once a week. And I would always have to go there and question mom AGAIN and then go and talk to dad and he was totally nuts. He tried to invite me over for dinner once (gross) and then said I could "bring my girl along." Gross.
Basically, though, what I hated was that I couldn't do good work. I had too many cases and too many things going on, and while I did a decent job keeping up with paperwork and made sure to see all of my kids every month, I couldn't really get on top of linking families up with enough services, I couldn't answer phone calls as timely as I would have liked, and I really beat myself up over that. I really like to do my best work and do right by my families and I absolutely wasn't able to do that, ever, and that really killed me. I used to have nightmares about that job.
Aaah, child welfare. When I lived in Ohio, I spent a brief amount of time (after we were all "restructured" out of work at the homeless shelter) working for an organization that acted as a contract agency for Franklin County Children's Services. Basically, Ohio was trying to save money by contracting out child welfare casework. These contract organizations would get $x per case and the organization's goal was to close the case before the money ran out.
I'm not even kidding.
I was pretty lucky in my child welfare life in that I didn't see anything horrible. I didn't see any awful awful abuse or any kind of really scary neglect. I imagine those cases are pretty rare. I had a lot of stupid things like "educational neglect" (when a kid misses too many days of school) and I had a number of cases with teens in the juvenile justice system. And then there were the cases where the parents hate each other so they call FCCS on each other every other day and talk about how mom is taking the baby to the crack house or dad is beating the kid in the car. And I would have to go, EVERY TIME, and investigate even though I know it was a lie.
Because of the high turnover of employees, I had very few cases that were mine from case opening. Someone would quit and all of the cases would have to be reshuffled. Some of my tougher cases (mostly the unruly teens sent out to foster homes in the middle of nowhere so they would stay out of trouble, or the teens in the residential programs) had been passed on so many times it was out. of. control. The records were a total disaster and someone would quit and everyone would try to pick and choose the least messy cases. I always got suckered into taking what no one else wanted. Like the teenage sex offender. And the girl who just cursed everyone out and ran away all the time (which means that the on-call worker ALWAYS had to deal with this girl and therefore always hated you). One time my friend (
sarahaubry) was on call and of course SC ran away again. Because she is MEAN, she called me at like 3am to say that SC was downtown. She came to pick me up. Man, SC was surprised to see me there! She actually kind of liked me so it was like being busted. Heh.The best case ever wasn't even my case, it was Sarah's. For a while when I was training, I shadowed her so I got to know a lot of her cases. (Of course, when she quit it meant that I got most of her cases.) One of her families was an aunt who was fostering her niece and who also had a daughter a similar age (both teenagers). The aunt was a big old butch lesbian who was also incredibly inappropriate (I love that) and we would go over and she would just start trash talking people. She was that woman who would say anything. The first time I came to her house, she asked Sarah later, "So. Your friend. She gay?" She also was known to open the door when Sarah and I were laughing about something and be all, "What are you bitches cackling about now?" She was just really open and really awesome and I loved her. It wasn't a great case from a worker standpoint (M's mom was nowhere in sight and she was really just riding out until she was 18) but it was a good time all around.
The worst case I had was this awful and sticky sexual abuse case. (Aren't they all?) Basically a little girl (maybe 10? 11?) told someone that her dad had molested her, and that person called it in. By the time I got the case, the whole family had worked on this girl so hard that she was talking about how she made it up. She was living with her aunt and uncle because of all of this (dad was homeless and technically didn't live in the home but was always there) and even THEY didn't believe her, but used the opportunity to tell mom how she didn't know how to raise her kids, blah blah. She had two brothers and they were furious that dad couldn't come around, so they kept saying awful things to her about how she was a liar. This poor girl was just a freaking MESS and no one wanted to realize that they were totally effing her up by not supporting her. I mean, she reports sexual abuse and no one wants to take her to counseling, no one wants to tell her dad to stay away, nothing. She was just this poor, sad, broken little thing floating around her aunt and uncle's house, picking up after their kids and failing out of school. Going to court for that case was a total mess because the dad was always disheveled and rambling, and the mom had mental illness big time and just couldn't see past her own existence, and then there were there two big angry brothers, then the uncle who kept telling his sister she was a bad mom, and all of the lawyers (mom's public defender, dad's public defender, the aunt and uncle got a lawyer, the daughter had an advocate, we had our lawyer, etc.). I was never so glad to hand a case over. Bleh.
I also had a case where dad was always mad at mom whenever she would go on a date, so if she went on a date (they were not together) he would ALWAYS call in a report on her. At least once a week. And I would always have to go there and question mom AGAIN and then go and talk to dad and he was totally nuts. He tried to invite me over for dinner once (gross) and then said I could "bring my girl along." Gross.
Basically, though, what I hated was that I couldn't do good work. I had too many cases and too many things going on, and while I did a decent job keeping up with paperwork and made sure to see all of my kids every month, I couldn't really get on top of linking families up with enough services, I couldn't answer phone calls as timely as I would have liked, and I really beat myself up over that. I really like to do my best work and do right by my families and I absolutely wasn't able to do that, ever, and that really killed me. I used to have nightmares about that job.
