The 13 Hour Day

Today I worked for 13 hours, but the crazy thing is it doesn’t feel as exhausting as I think a 13 hour day sounds. But it was a jam-packed day, so a quick recap of my day:

• court review hearing on an abandoned baby. Fortunately, they realize that I will be quick and put us in first and I am only there for an hour – not the usual 3 hours.
• I had planned a home visit near the court house, but it is canceled due to a relative being gravely ill. Head back to the office.
• Read emails and check in a co-worker who is doing homestudies on some of relative placements.
• Call parent with phone interpreter to set up final psych eval appointment with parenting observation component. Call psychologist to confirm.
• Get call from a TANF social worker requesting info about a mom who is applying for benefits and saying her son is with her. He is not, but taking this call reminds me…
• …to fax substance abuse eval to TANF worker on another case that I didn’t get to yesterday.
• Chat with unit members about a colleague leaving, a new worker in the unit, and the overall status of the unit (very important!)
• Try calling client, but phone “temporarily out of service” which I now know means that they are out of minutes.
• Quick lunch with a colleague. (Whole Foods has the best salad bar! So expensive, yet so yummy!)
• Drive across town to go to a seminar about evidenced based practices for parents involved in child welfare. I try not to get offended by the obvious digs at social workers.
• Drive to do home visit, which takes me more than an hour and a half to get there! Grrr. This is with my shaken baby and her baby brother. They look cute and are progressing, but she still has so many developmental issues. Foster parents are great, and a little chatty.
• Drive an hour to do another home visit/meeting – stupid rush hour traffic and not transferring cases even when everyone moves out of region. This is the second referral that has come in the last 2 months on three little kids with their parents that got them back in the summer. After lots of discussions yesterday, it my opinion (and, really, decision) that we didn’t need to move the kids immediately. The parents had missed another doctor’s appointment and haven’t been taking the appointments seriously enough. However, they have been doing well in lots of other realms – drug treatment, UAs, working with in-home providers. A bunch of us are there, and I let them know that I had to convince others yesterday not to move the kids, but if they miss another appointment, we will have to. I try to be clear and straightforward, so they understand the gravity of the situation; yet, I also want to be supportive and identify strengths, because this family does have some. (Also, I have to deal with some posturing from a worker from the region that the family is in who insinuates that I am not doing my job and is frankly, a bit old-fashioned. Overall, I think I handle it well, but I wonder if he (or someone else) contacts my supervisor to check in about all of this).
• Drive the 45 minutes home – fortunately there is no longer traffic – and arrive just after 9 pm and around 140 total miles.

Budget Cuts

So our state, like so many others is facing a huge budget crisis and we are starting to feel the effects.  Rumors have been flying around the office and today it really came to a head.  There were numerous conversations about what may or may not be happening and then in the afternoon there was a secret, impromptu supervisors meeting that really got things riled up.  Just as everyone was speculating about what the meeting was about, we got an email stating that we would no longer be able to get email on our blackberries.  This is a huge blow to how I do my work.  I (and many others) do tons of work on our blackberries.  It is the one thing that keeps me sane in court as I am wasting the time away as I am waiting for my hearing.  Being able to read and respond to emails while doing something else is something that really keeps the workload kinda manageable.  I am fearful of what is going to happen now.

The other big concern has been the loss of jobs and services.  We know that lots of our services are going to be cut, but I don’t think that until it actually happens it will sink in.  And then there are the jobs.  I *think* that I am safe because I have a permanent position, am carrying cases, my boss likes me, and there are people under me.  But, in reality, I have only been there for 7 months and we just don’t know how deep the cuts will be.  The story of 30-some temporary employees being laid off in another office was circulating and igniting some anxiety.  So being laid off is something that I have to think is a possibility, albeit a small possibility.  It sure is not fun to be hanging in the air.

This cannot be good for our morale or our work with clients.  We are all distracted and very soon our jobs are going to get harder and we are going to have less services to offer families.  It was speculated aloud today about whether we are going to start to feel pressure to place fewer kids – essentially adjusting the level at which kids are deemed “in imminent harm”.  I hope not, but I think things are going to get really interesting quickly.

Shaken Baby Syndrome Parents

I have a shaken baby on my caseload who is doing quite well in her foster home, although she has severe delays and will endure long-standing effects from the violent shaking she suffered at the hands of her parent(s) at 6 weeks old.  She was in the hospital for quite a while and has been in a foster home since.  There has been a criminal investigation, although it has stalled because they cannot pinpoint which parent did it and neither are admitting anything happened.

So now it is months later and I have two parents who want to parent this kid, yet I have all of this risk that I have to take into consideration.  And I am supposed to offer them services.  Yet, there are no services for parents of shaken babies.  I looked at the research that has been done and really there is just the labeling of what SBS is and guides on how to prevent it.  I am supposed to offer services to these parents to eliminate their parental deficiencies, but they do not exist.  But I also don’t feel comfortable sending home a young child with sever disabilities that are the result of the severe physical abuse by at least one of the parents.

I am frustrated.  I am in a position where I could see that these parents could possibly be good parents to this child.  However, at this point, my job is to look at the risk factors and they tell me that I cannot let the child go home.  But do I have enough to prove in a court?  My colleague has reminded me to let the court decide and have that decision be on them.  I am just frustrated because there are no services and I feel like may get the blame for that.  And it is easy to see how good things are going now – reports from the visitation are good and the parents are presenting as committed.  I just have to remind myself of what a violent act they committed and the long-term effects this young child is going to have – developmental delays, learning disabilities, and vision problems.  What an awful case.

Personal Attacks

So we had the meeting with the family I spoke about in the last post in which the grandmother lied to me about the whereabouts of the child.  Overall the meeting went well, although the mother and grandmother showed up almost an hour late (and we purposed had the meeting across the street from their house so it would be convenient for them).  I wanted to move the child to his paternal side of the family and we were able to all agree to that.  In coming to that decision, however, the mom found some opportunities to attack me personally (which were all completely unrelated to the issue, I may add).  And I found my responses to this interesting.

First, I my physical and immediate reaction, was to just sit there and take it.  I am a professional and I need to act like one.  And we had meeting facilitators to be there to redirect mom back onto the actual topic – not me, but if she agreed with moving the child to the paternal grandmother.  (Mom’s lawyer was also there to try to keep her on task too, which was interesting, because I do not think that she was recognizing what he was trying to do for her.)

So I am sitting in this meeting and listening to these jabs she is throwing at me, and in my mind, I am also like, what the heck?  I don’t deserve this kind of treatment.  I am working my butt off to try to do what is right and help you and your son, and your response is to just take pot shots at me?  But then I think about it, and have to realize that this isn’t really about me, this is about her.  She is frustrated and sad and angry that she does not have custody of her son right now, who she loves.  And let’s be honest, I am a really good and easy scapegoat to take this out on.  So when I look at it that way, it doesn’t surprise me.

I am realizing that I am going to need to develop a thicker skin.  But is that also how social workers get jaded?  I guess there is a balance somewhere there where one is able to take some punches, but is also not devoid of feelings and emotions.  This seems to be a tough balance to strike.  And I am realizing how this job just cannot be done for 30 years.  Not child welfare as a whole, because there are lots of different jobs that one can do in the field, but this front line work can just really take a toll.  It is just not sustainable.  It makes me kinda sad to say that, but I think it is a reality.  I wonder if there are ways to try to fix that and I guess maybe I should try to look at some of the literature on it.  If only I had the time…

Caught in a Lie

A few weeks ago, I decided that because I had worked more hours than I am paid for, that I would flex some of my time and take 2 days off to go see a friend out of state. Great. So the afternoon before I get on a plane, I go do one of my monthly visits of one of my kids living with a relative. I expected the visit to take not more than 30 minutes, as I have been in contact with the family and not a lot had changed. Of course, I was wrong.

Essentially, I get there and the child is not. Grandma tells me he is at daycare, but when I go there to see him after my visit with grandma, he is not there. I make some phone calls, and even find out that grandma asked another relative to tell me that the kid was with her, even though he was not. Uh oh.

Now this is the grandma that I recently had a “difficult conversation” with. I know she doesn’t like the Dept. being involved and doesn’t see the original problems that got us involved. I also knew that she wasn’t always being upfront with me about things. So I called my supervisor who suggested that I have an in-person conversation with grandma about her lying to me. A million thoughts go through my head while I am driving back to the house. How will she react? Will she get violent? Why would she lie to me? Where is the kid? Am I going to miss my plane? Will I have to move this kid today?

I get there and mom and kid are at home with grandma. After I ask only 2 or 3 times, grandma admits that she let mom take kid with her, which is a violation of the court order that stated mom is only to have supervised contact. Now that truth is out there, then come the excuses/reasons/dismissals of my concern:

• The Dept. shouldn’t be involved at all
• The kid is fine – she didn’t hurt him
• She loves him
• You don’t know what you are talking about because you don’t have kids
• Why don’t we have a social worker from the closer office
• The child needs to be with his mom

I probably should not have been, but was a little surprised by the personal attacks that came at me. But I stayed remarkably calm. I again emphasize that while they may not agree with the court order, they must follow it, and more importantly, grandma agreed to follow it. I talked with my supervisor some more who also talks with our attorney, and they decide to have grandma sign a safety plan that states she will prevent mom from having any contact with child until we have a court hearing or meeting. Neither want to agree to that, and I really didn’t know what to do with that. Basically, they were telling me that they didn’t want to agree at all and I wanted to snap back at them and say, so you want me to just take him now? They are playing hardball with me but I don’t think they realize the consequences. As I am trying to figure out how to deal with that curveball, my supervisor asks if I want her to talk with grandma. Now my supervisor usually comes across as a very nice, sweet lady. But she can intimidate the crap out of some people and knows what language to use to convince people that she means business. Fortunately, it worked once again and grandma agreed.

So now we have a meeting where we are going to hash everything out and I am going to seek to have the child placed with another relative. And I did make my plane, although, I did not pack very well and I was not very relaxed. And I did have to do a little bit of work, writing a report and speaking to other parties, while out of town. Unfortunately, it is going to make me wonder about going out of town again because I am swamped, not just with this case, but also with my other cases that seemed to just be waiting for me to try to relax.

Returning Kids

I returned my first kid to his mom recently.  He came into care because mom was using drugs pretty heavily and not properly taking care of him.  Kid was removed and mom got into an inpatient treatment program.  I really think that having him taken away was very painful for mom and it really motivated her to get committed to getting clean.  And she has been doing great in treatment.

Fortunately for me, returning a kid to a parent is not just me deciding at some point that I want to do it.  When that is something we are recommending, we present the case to a team of community members – professionals in the child and family mental health/welfare field, but not employees of the Dept. – and they make recommendations that we follow 99.99% of the time.  So I brought this case to them and they agreed with my recommendation to start a transition home that would occur over a month.  And so we transitioned him home, gradually increasing the time to allow both the kid and Mom to adjust to each other.  And there are no issues.

So the kid is now full-time with mom, which is mostly great.  I just still have that little bit of worry – that little place in the back of my mind that wonders, “what if?”  Some of those ‘what ifs’ include: what if I have been played by mom?  What if mom really isn’t able to care for him full-time?  What if mom relapses?  What if mom takes off from treatment and take the kid with her?  What if my judgment was off?

Intellectually, fundamentally, I do think I have been right.  I do think this mom is on the right path, is committed to treatment, and will not do anything to jeopardize the placement of her son.  And, at the moment, I have to trust myself.  I guess I just also have to feel comfortable with that self-doubt.  I suppose that it is healthy.  But it is just another reminder of the dangers of this job.

Difficult Conversations (aka Making Moms Cry)

My job has gotten a bit harder lately as I have had to have some tough conversations with caregivers. I made a Mom cry the other day having one of these conversations. Her case has recently been transfered to me and her 11 month old daughter is in foster care because she was shaken causing her to have seizures, brain hemorrhages, and hospitalized for days. Neither parents could explain the injuries and mom admitted that dad was alone with her right before she began seizing. Both parents have been inconsistent with services and mother is still living with dad, despite the Dept.’s concerns. And mom is pregnant again. So I got to have the conversation with her telling her that if she is still living with him, the Dept. has strong concerns for the safety of the new baby. She cried. But I had to let her know what the reality was.

So same case, I then had to speak with mom’s doctor (she signed a release of information). I first asked the doctor lots of questions about mom – any concerns, if she has been compliant with prenatal care, etc. Everything seemed fine from the doctor’s end. Then I got to have a similar conversation with the doctor. Turns out the doctor is a resident and has never dealt with anything like this. She sounded kinda freaked out so I was explaining the process to her. Then she asked me for advice for what to do (what a nice switch of power for once). I think she understood it all by the end of the talk, but she was still pretty freaked out.

And then I had to have a tough conversation with a relative caregiver. She is a grandmother of a two year old who was removed from his mother first for medical neglect and then overall neglect. Grandmother has consistently minimized the issues of mom and the little guy and is pretty pissed that we are involved in the first place. So I get to have the conversation with her that she essentially needs to cooperate with the Dept. and be honest with me or we will have to look for another placement for him. She can definitely be pushy and I have probably been a bit intimidated by her. But today I had to be very clear with her that she needed to be open and honest with me if she wanted to remain a placement. Not sure if she will change her ways.

So I was definitely nervous before all of these conversations. Being confrontational is not really a key tenant taught in social work school. But being honest and direct is so I just need to get more used to being the bad guy and bearing some tough news to clients. And hopefully it will get a little easier and less anxiety provoking.

Relative vs. Foster Placements

A few people have asked me to elaborate on my thoughts on the differences between relative and foster placements for kids. So I have thought a bit more about my comment and come up with this imperfect analysis:

Relative placements are, in most cases, best for kids. It is with someone they (usually) already know and trust, in a home they are familiar with, and with people with whom they (should) have an unconditional bond with.

So what’s the problem? In my (limited) experience, patterns of problems have come up. One, is that parents misdirect their frustration/anger/sadness/resentment of not having their child with them onto the relative caregiver. This can naturally lead to lots of problems, including the erosion of the relationship between the caregiver and the parent. This can also be harder to control because communication is not usually restricted as it is with foster placements.

Another problem is relative placements usually don’t have a good understanding of the process and expectations of being involved with the child welfare system. This, usually, reflects a failure of social workers of making sure the relatives understand what is going on.  It seems that sometimes we social workers just forget that they don’t know or are just too caught up in making sure that this kid has a placement at 9 pm.

And related to that, is that I am finding that relatives are often minimizing the problems and issues going on with the family. It is very typical/understandable for relatives to want to keep the issues within the family and not have these strangers involved in their lives.  I think this can be very dangerous and can ultimately delay kids and parents getting the services that they need. (And to be honest, it is also annoying and makes my job more difficult.)

Foster placements, on the other hand, are usually quite seasoned and often have more experience with the system than the social worker. They often approach the placements with professionalism, which is enjoyable. The week when I was doing all of my home visits, I found foster families making themselves available very quickly and found them even eager to speak with me about the kids. Some relative caregivers seem to either want me to be their personal social worker telling me their life story or want nothing to do with me ever.

Some foster parents do, sometimes, seem to be a little overzealous about the kids, however, and you can almost feel the hope they have to adopt the kid. This is tough (for them, obviously, because they love the kid) but also for the social worker because we have to tight rope our way through conversations. They are entitled to some information, but not all. And we want to know that folks are long-term resources, but we don’t want to get their hopes up. I am still not sure how well I am doing at balancing all this.

And then on the other end, I guess there is always the issue that foster placements may see the placement as too much as a job and therefore be able to leave it (the job and therefore the kid) a little too quickly.

So, there you go. My very rough, unpolished, early assessment on the differences between relative and foster placements. Now if you asked me if I would prefer to have a case with a relative or foster placement, I think I would have to say, it depends. Like most things in life, there are good and bad relative and foster placements. I have seen examples of all. And this is also just a social worker perspective. I know I am an outsider and not seeing everything. But I am noticing some trends, which I find interesting. I wonder if they will remain consistent.

How to mess with a Millennial…

So a quick way to mess with a Millennial and just get them totally mixed up and off their game is to take away their internet access.  This is what has happened to me over the last 1.5 to 2 weeks and it has really thrown me off.  And now, I feel like I am just catching up and getting back on track.  Which is a bummer, because there was lots of stuff going on at work that I really wanted to talk about.  Such as:

• My attempting to place a child in protective custody with another colleague but ended up just sitting in a car waiting for cops to show up for hours.
• Half the day I spent thinking I was going to have to remove one of my kids from his grandma because she wasn’t providing adequate supervision.  His mother was arrested for driving without a license and without a child restraint, but it turned out that it happened before he came into grandma’s care and not during.
• My (somewhat) successfully and coherently explaining the court and legal process of child welfare to a relative caregiver.
• Taking a 30 lb 7 month old downtown to get her paternity testing.
• Negotiating and tight rope walking to get to an agreed dependency on a case that was very close to going to trial.
• Doing a slew of homevisits and noting the differences between relative caregivers and foster parents.
• Trying to get a family basic things such as their rent and electricity bills paid.
• Talking with the TANF and food stamps workers and trying to figure out their system so my clients can access those benefits.

And probably something that was pretty big was the father of Blue’s oldest son came to visit.  I had the lovely job of informing Blue of this (she did not get as angry as I thought she was going to) and that her visits with the kid might be altered as a result.  And then I was there when the son and father met for the first time in years (they had been speaking on the phone and writing letters recently).  Blue did decide that she wanted a paternity test during the few days that he was here.  He was not required to do so as he is the legal father (he is on the birth certificate) but agreed anyway.  Well, despite her swearing that he was not, results showed that he is and now they are looking to send that child to live with his dad.  Very interesting.

So an eventful few weeks.  But I am starting to feel more comfortable in my job and feel like I am asking fewer questions.  I am feeling more confident when speaking to clients and what to say to them.  That being said, it is becoming more clear to me that my supervisor definitely gave me “easier” – more straight-forward – cases, which is nice as it helps ease me into the job.  I wonder how long it will take for her to give me a crazier one.  And I still haven’t had to speak in court.  So I am kinda looking forward to getting that out of the way so I am not so anxious about it.  But that will happen soon.

I have also found that I much prefer to have a case from the beginning.  However, I am also finding that I am having to fill in a lot of gaps that the investigative social workers are missing.  They aren’t asking questions, they aren’t running background checks, they are missing important forms.  So I am not thrilled at that because it puts me into a position where I almost have a dual role – social worker trying to help get families services, but still having that investigative hat on where I am actively still searching for evidence to use to get dependency.  Sigh.  But the important thing is: I still like my job!

Big Decisions

Fortunately for me, it is now policy that big decisions (like returning a kid home) are the shared responsibility of many different people.  One person is not supposed to shoulder the burden.  I have been facing a big decision this week.  One of my kids, who is just over a year old, has a court hearing tomorrow morning.  His mother, who is currently in inpatient substance abuse treatment for an addiction to heroin, has been looking to agree to dependency and hoping that she can go to Family Treatment Court, which is a special program exclusively for parents for whom substance abuse is the primary concern where the the atmosphere is more intimate, but there there is more accountability.  It is a great program.  The father, who apparently does not have a substance abuse problem, is not wanting to agree to dependency.  So we had to decide if we wanted to fight for dependency and take it to a trial.

So I did what all good (and new) social workers do – I staffed it with my supervisor.  My supervisor was concerned (as was I) that dad was unaware that his girlfriend had relapsed and was actively using heroin.  She was also concerned about criminal activity that he had been linked to (although not charged).  So we are going forward.  Today, I spent trying to get my attorney all the evidence and information he needed in order to get a strong case built to hopefully show dad’s attorney that we have a decent case and will agree to settling.

Tomorrow, I have been warned, the defense attorneys may try to trick me and get me to say something that they can use against me.  I am not thrilled about this prospect.  Plus, this feels like a very strange way for me to be working as a social worker.  I want to be helpful and work with my clients, yet today I had to spend lots of time attempting to build a case against them.  And I know that my primary client is the kid, but I do feel like the parents are too.  But I do think that there is still risk with this dad in regards to this kid’s safety.  He appears to minimize problems quite a bit and I am concerned that he had no idea that his girlfriend was actively using heroin.

And it was interesting gathering the information.  I learned today that we have U.S. Postal Inspectors that investigate mail fraud, postal burglaries, identity theft, and related things.  I had no idea.  The inspector was very nice and helpful and so interesting to get a totally different perspective on clients.  I do think that I want to do some investigative CPS work in the future.

So I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.  A colleague suggested to do very little talking, let the lawyers hash it all out, and try to just listen to people.  We’ll see how that goes.  I just hope that I can keep my composure and not screw things up.