FOCUS GROUP ON SOCIAL WORK IN PUBLIC CHILD WELFARE

Enhancing the Ability of an Agency to Protect Children

In 1996 the City of New York created the Administration for Children’s Services to improve how the City handles cases of child abuse and neglect. A component of the plan for the organization was to increase the number of professional social workers working with children and families.

In a focus group convened by NASW-NYC on May 16, 2005, eight social workers employed in different roles with ACS, representing all five boroughs and different programs, came together to discuss their work. NASW-NYC was interested in understanding what contribution professional social workers make to the critical, life and death work of ACS, and the primary question discussed was specifically on this issue.

An administrator from the agency invited the social workers on behalf of NASW. While no claim can be made that these workers are representative of all professional social workers at the agency, what they had to share is informative.

In order to optimize the likelihood that the discussion would be open and frank, no one from the administration of ACS attended the focus group, nor did anyone who had any relationship of authority to the participants. In addition, the group was informed that they would not be identified in any subsequent report about the discussion. Anonymity was believed to be an essential component of the meeting.

From Investigator to Social Worker

One social worker who participated shared with the group that prior to obtaining her MSW degree she had been a child abuse investigator with the agency (and its predecessor agency before the reorganization). She said that there is a difference for her now, in terms of how she understands the situations before her. She said that in the past everything was more or less “cut and dry”. She said that she now examines what is going on inside the home and sees the family as a whole, with an eye to determining the family’s strengths and building on them. She characterized the difference as moving from the role of an investigator to being a social worker.

One outcome of this is that she is more attuned to the value of preventive services, and she is more likely to refer families to these services. The implication is that this social worker is seeing opportunities for keeping families together while addressing their internal domestic problems, instead of simply removing a child from the home.

A Stronger Voice

Another social worker said that she recently became involved with a 15 year old child who had been living in a residential treatment center. The worker shared that she had originally worked with the child when he was nine, at a time prior to her going for advanced social work education.

She said that she had raised questions six years earlier about whether the child, who was diagnosed with a developmental disability, actually needed an institutional level of care, but she had not been effective in influencing the placement decision. She said that when she became involved in this child’s case more recently, she was able to have him re-tested and placed in what she said was a more appropriate, lower level of care with his aunt. She also assisted the child in being enrolled in a school for children with his type of problem.

This social worker said that she could see in this case that her graduate education gave her a much stronger voice and the capacity to advocate more effectively on behalf of the child.

Preventing Family Break-up

Another social worker shared an experience where she met with a mother who was determined to give her child up for adoption. The worker said that as she became aware of the circumstances behind the child’s birth and discussed this with the mother, an opportunity to jointly explore the situation presented itself. The mother shared how she had not planned on having a child and how this affected her life. The outcome of the discussion was an acceptance by the mother to see the value in utilizing preventive services and in keeping her child.

The social worker pointed out that an essential element in working with the mother was enabling her to share what had happened in becoming pregnant in the first place. She said that once the mother had talked about this, she felt that she did not need to keep it a secret and was quite relieved. This then allowed for an exploration of an alternative.

From an Interview to a Life Saved

In another situation where a father wanted to give up custody of his teen-age daughter, a focus group participant said that she found the father to be evasive when being interviewed. The social worker discovered from speaking with family members that the father was in conflict with his daughter over her being a lesbian. She also sensed from the daughter, given her level of despair, that she was possibly suicidal. She said that she ultimately intervened at a moment that, it turned out, saved the teenager’s life.

The social worker said that, given the setting in which she works in the judicial system, a probation officer would usually be the one to meet with the family. She said that the type of interviewing that she engages in needs to be more of the norm.

When Trauma Builds on Trauma

NASW-NYC discovered from two focus group participants that ACS is now using professional social workers as specialists with advanced expertise in areas such as mental health and chemical dependency, to assist and advise other staff who are facing particularly difficult cases. In one situation, one of these social workers shared how he was told of a situation in which the mother of a child in the care of ACS had been seriously burned and hospitalized.

The social worker was informed that the child’s guardian had made the decision that the boy should visit his mother in the hospital, without understanding that the experience could be traumatizing. While the social worker was powerless to influence that decision, he mobilized the mental health staff at the hospital to be with the boy and to provide him with support. Without this, the child would likely have gone through the experience without any one being aware of its impact.

Challenges in Doing the Work

The second question that the members of the focus group addressed asked about the challenges they face in doing their work.

The first challenge raised was the concern that there are not enough community resources available to meet family needs. One social worker said that the implication for this is that social workers need to know where to find resources for the families they work with, regardless of where they can be obtained within New York City.

The rest of the identified challenges focused on the relationship between the organization and social workers, themselves. While recognizing the efforts that have been made in the past several years to increase the number of professional social workers, group participants said that, in their opinion, there are still not enough professional social workers in the Agency. They also expressed concern about there being a shortage in the contract programs, as well.

It was pointed out that the Agency’s innovative programs, aimed at keeping families together, would be more effective, in their opinion, if more social workers were available.

Another concern that was expressed is that the agency does not always recognize the value of the skills that staff bring to the organization once they have received their professional degree. Staff who are given support by the Agency to go for their MSW may return to their former or similar position, doing the same work with little or no recognition for what skills and competencies have been acquired.

A few participants reported that while there are not enough professional social workers, there is still, at times, an under-utilization of professional social workers in some areas of the City while other areas need more. Some areas have less demand for social workers but have not been re-deployed. Adding to this, one social worker shared that there are times that she actually has little to do in her program.

In addition, concern was expressed that professional social workers are under-compensated for their work. Also, there is a feeling that social workers with masters degrees, who are supervised by staff with less education than themselves, are at times not respected for what they have to contribute when working with children.

Concerns About Personal Safety

In relation to the discussion on challenges, the participants also discussed their concerns for their own safety in working around the issue of domestic violence and child abuse.

While some of the focus group participants told stories of working with clients or their family members who became violent or threatening, one participant said that dealing with violence is a concern but not the primary concern while working at the Agency.

Participants did say that there might be a need for metal detectors to prevent anyone from bringing a weapon to the site of their programs; and there was a feeling that security guards are not adequately prepared to prevent trouble.

Vulnerability in making home visits, while alone, was also cited as a concern.