Tragedy in Vermont

Our social work colleagues in Vermont experienced a heartbreaking tragedy this weekend with the shooting death of a Department of Children and Families social worker. With very preliminary information, we know that the social worker was shot outside the DCF office, allegedly by a DCF client who lost custody of her child(ren).

The Child Welfare field has always been a challenging one.  Social Workers and other child welfare staff are expected to deal with complex social, environmental, psychological, and mental health issues that affect society’s vulnerable families.  These multifarious problems can be short-lived or chronic, and it is up to the child welfare community to deal with them, address them, solve them.  With this awesome responsibility, society must do its utmost to give child welfare the support, resources and mobilized attention that the job demands. 

For this reason, NASW continually supports manageable caseloads, professional training for staff, and every effort to fully fund and staff child welfare agencies with the necessary resources. 

Please see the statement from our colleague in Vermont below:

  

NASW-VT STATEMENT 

The Vermont Chapter of the National Association for Social Workers (NASW-VT) expresses its heartbreak and sympathies after Friday night's fatal shooting of a Department for Children and Families (DCF) employee.  

Employees of the Department for Children and Families do immensely difficult work with children and families experiencing complicated and often extreme hardship. Every day, these workers do their best to navigate sometimes-impossible challenges in an environment of scarce resources. This work helps ensure the safety and wellbeing of communities throughout Vermont. 

While we know that incidents such as these have been known to occur to child protection workers across the country, it is impossible to prepare for or fathom the devastation that a crime such as this causes. NASW-VT expresses our deepest sympathies to the family of the victim of this crime. We stand in proud solidarity with child protection workers across Vermont and across our country in the wake of this unspeakable violence. 

  

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20150809/THISJUSTIN/708099901

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/2015/08/09/vigils-planned-slain-social-worker/31377181/

Eilis O’Herlihy, LICSW

Executive Director, NASW-VT

Calling All DCF Alumnae Staff

Calling All DCF Alumnae Staff,

It was several decades ago that I was hired as a “child welfare worker” with DCF, formerly known as the Division of Child Guardianship (DCG).  I was recruited right out of undergraduate school, with excitement and trepidation under my belt.  I was going to do good work for kids.  I was going to save them from sadness, badness, and madness.  I was going to make my parents proud of me and I was going to buy my first car with my new salary.

For the first week, I shadowed several veteran child welfare workers, none of whom had social work degrees.  I was supervised by several different supervisors, all of whom had MSWs and who patiently explained how to take a history, be nonjudgmental, and complete my paperwork as soon as I got back to the office.  There was Jim Pisciotta and Joe Pare and several other MSW supervisors and managers who helped us inexperienced, uncredentialed, and skill-free recruits keep kids safe.  I was clueless, thinking all I needed was good intentions and a big heart. The supervisors were more intentional, attempting to help us non-social workers understand that it takes much more than a big heart to address the problems that our families faced.  There were histories of alcoholism, poverty, domestic violence, and birth defects- none of which I had experienced growing up or even faced in my later teen years.  I was, indeed, a greenhorn, in foreign territory.

And almost 50 years later, we have pretty much the same situation, with folks coming into the child welfare work world with good intentions and hopes to “do good.”  Many do have social work degrees, and, for these folks, the work is a professional challenge.  For those who have no social work background (where one learns about the complex environmental, social, and biological variables that influence a family’s inability to keep their kids safe and happy), well, they totally struggle even with highly trained social work supervisors.

Child welfare is very serious work.  It is just the kind of work that calls upon one’s social work training, education, and field work.  And that is why NASW-MA has filed legislation that requires anyone who calls themselves a social worker to have a social work background- a BSW or an MSW.  I know how I and my fellow “unprepared recruits” struggled to do the best we could with our variety of non-social work undergraduate backgrounds.  Even with the talent of our social work supervisors, we still had little to offer our families and kids.  NASW-MA will be working with DCF and other child welfare advocates and educators to bring the best trained social work staff to a most valuable human resource: the children and their families.

Progress with Professionalizing the DCF Workforce

NASW, the profession of social work, and the Department of Children and Families had a major victory last week in the area of further professionalizing the child welfare workforce.  Amendment 904 to the state budget will require all social workers employed by the Department to obtain a license as a social worker within the first 6 months of employment (passed the Senate on May 23^rd, 2014).  In addition, the commissioner shall require social workers employed by the department to participate in no less than 30 hours per year of paid professional development training, provided this training is consistent with applicable collective bargaining agreements.

The MA Chapter was responsible for submitting the language that changed the time requirement for licensing for new employees of the Department from 3 years to 6 months.  We feel this is an important step toward ensuring the state's commitment to providing quality professional services to the child welfare population.

The DCF Target: It Is Not Over

So much is being written about what is going on at the Department of Children and Families and there is so much finger pointing that the Daily News should really take on a new name - How about the Daily Target?  It is doubtless that a series of tragic events has occurred over the past months:

·         Three children died;

·         The agency charged with protecting these children and strengthening their families did not prevent the deaths;

·         The workers assigned the job of protecting and strengthening failed…the agency failed.

All this was reported from various sources and we all feel so helpless – we being the workers assigned to the cases, the managers assigned to support the workers, the professionals associated with  the child welfare agency (i.e. the police, school systems, community agencies contracted with DCF to provide services).  The list goes on.  And the NASW, the association representing the social work profession is also in the mix, for  the term ‘social worker’ applies to us.

Beyond all the ‘knee jerk’ responses about which I have previously written, I have offered the following to the press:

1.       That the media catch the child welfare community doing something right, rather than looking for what is wrong.  What is right is…

a.       The thousands of children and families that have benefitted from short and long-term supports offered by DCF and its contracted agencies;

b.      The thousands of kids that say that DCF saved them; AND

c.       The thousands of foster families who not only provided valuable assistance to the biological families in need of the positive modeling foster parents supply and the thousands of social workers, including myself as a former DCG worker, who believed in parents intentions to do the right thing, but who just did not know how to do it.

2.       That the DCF training unit be adequately funded to provide the essential professional training needed for individuals going into the field.  It is short-sighted and irresponsible to hire 200 new workers without giving them the tools, the knowledge and the supervised training required to understand and intervene appropriately in the complicated situations into which they thrust.

3.       That the law, regulations and practice require that only individuals with social work degrees from accredited BSW and MSW Schools of Social Work be hired to work with some of the most complex and compromised family and individual cases to which DCF is charged.  There is a place for other professionals to do important case management, coordination and related work but the demanding role of a social worker in DCF requires people who have had several years of supervised experience and course work before they take on the serious work within the child welfare field.

Who Is Responsible?

Last week I attended a meeting with DCF Commissioner Olga Roche and a group of child welfare stakeholders who were briefed on the imminent release of the Child Welfare League of America’s (CWLA) Progress Update to Governor Patrick and Secretary Polanowicz.  This is the interim report of the ongoing independent investigation of the Department of Children and Families, the culminating report to be released in May.

Click HERE for the Report

CWLA is one of several groups investigating the recent disappearance of Jeremiah Oliver, a 5-year old boy, along with the longer standing issues impacting the delivery of services to children and families involved with DCF across the state.   In turn, the Office of the Child Advocate did an inquiry and the House Committee on Post Audit and Oversight is in the midst of its investigation.  The Department has also performed its own study. 

Everybody wants someone, or someone else to DO SOMETHING about DCF.  It is true that some of us (i.e. child welfare agencies, SEIU, NASW, etc.) are some of the key groups that have visible and even legal accountabilities.  Responsibility for the current state of child welfare in the Commonwealth is not restricted to these easily identified groups.   It is ALL of our responsibility.  Our neighbors, family members, school personnel, the mailman who comes to the door daily, along with those individuals in the medical profession.  The task of looking after members of our communities who may be compromised by a complex combination of mental and physical health issues, poverty, generational domestic violence, homelessness, joblessness and addictions, belongs to all of us.

Recently, I developed an interest in ancient society’s view of family and child welfare.  I found that 4,500 years ago papyrus scrolls placed in pyramids spelled out acts of mercy that society members had to follow.  3,000 years ago the Mosaic code instructed the Jewish people to help the poor and disadvantaged people and in 530 BCE Siddhartha, the Buddha, taught that the path to enlightenment included love and charity to others.  There was no Department of Children and Families in ancient times, no Riversides, Waysides or MSPCCs…just everyday people looking out for each other.  True we have become more specialized 6,000 years later with the advent of groups performing the functions that all early peoples were expected to perform.  However the development of these fairly modern (at least post Romanic) institutions still does not exempt  the rest of us who are not officially  ‘in the business’ from watching out for our brothers, sisters, cousins, neighbors and friends.

Leading From Possibility

CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH

This morning I attended the monthly meeting of the Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative (CBHI) Advisory Council, with one of our MSW Interns from Salem State University.  This is the group that is advising the Department of Mental Health on the implementation plan of the Rosie D. case outcome. All the professional mental health societies and trade organizations as well specialty MD groups, advocacy groups and client consumer groups, Executive Office of Health and Human Service Agencies, hospitals serving children and others concerned with Mental Health Issues and services related to children.  It was a big group as it always is.  These are the folks who not only care about the mental health services provided to children, but are really focused on the barriers standing in the way of delivering these services. And there are many that seem to be unintentional- the consequence of addressing a complex set of issues, services and financial restraints.

As we started reviewing what are mission was, our accomplishments, our authority, our power (or lack of), we noted all the other initiatives that were occurring at the same time with similar missions:  There is: the CANS project that zeros in on providing ‘wrap around services’ for children; the Behavioral Health/Primary Care Integration Group, which is focuses on just what the title says; the state Mental Health Planning  Council which oversees mental health services to kids and adults; the Department of Child and Family Services Advisory Council, which focuses on the services provided to DCF families and Children; the group that; the Office of the Child Advocate; the group that is reviewing the Governor’s proposal to restructure the provision of state services to children;  and several others.

As we started listing all the groups, we saw that we really needed to get clear about our own focus and to coordinate these efforts of well informed, dedicated, and committed mental health individuals caring about the mental, social and educational health of our children. Our next meeting will focus on this question. As we go through this process, I remind myself that many good people care tremendously about providing services to our children and that there are many routes to follow-none are simple or clear cut, just like most of life.  We need to ‘be with’ the lack of clarity as we sort it all out. The ambiguity is clear.

Carol J. Trust