Social Services takes the Blame

My title is in reference to the recent tragedy in Washington, DC in which a mother of 4 was discovered to have killed her children because she thought they were possessed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011001174_2.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR2008011101761.html?hpid=topnews

It should be obvious to anyone that this woman suffers from severe mental illness. That a woman could kill her own children and live with their dead bodies under the same roof for several months is almost incomprehensible. This type of behavior is the reason why our society has organizations in place to monitor and control citizens. I believe most people want our government to step in and prevent these types of situations. On a daily basis the police, social service workers, and others take action to prevent harm and abuse from occurring or continuing. However, no system can prevent all tragedys.

So the reaction of Mayor Fenty in this situation is to call into question the performance of these organizations. Everybody's favorite whipping boy seems to be Child and Family Services Agency(CFSA). They are an agency that has the unenviable task of interfering in the matters of citizens in order to protect children. Employees of this agency are overworked and underpaid. The reason why so many cases of reported abuse and neglect are closed without a positive outcome is that there aren't enough people in these positions to adequately do their job.

It was implied by Mayor Fenty in the above articles that CFSA should have done more to protect these children. I wish CFSA could have done that. However, how much time can a CFSA caseworker spend on a case in which they cannot even reach the family, when they have active cases with participating families that they already have little time to address? It seems the solution that city administrators are focused on will ultimately hurt CFSA and not help it. From the Washington Post...

He(Fenty) called the case record"extremely underwhelming and disappointing," and vowed to revamp procedures and punish or fire city workers found responsible for letting the family slip through the cracks.
"We are witnesses to a great tragedy. We've lost four children," said acting D.C. attorney general Peter Nickles. "We're going to hold those people responsible for the event leading to the deaths of these kids."

These quotes make it appear that whoever was assigned to this case will likely be fired from their position. Therefore the other overworked CFSA caseworkers will now have to take on the burden of more cases that this employee was assigned to. I would also not be surprised if other caseworkers choose to resign from their positions after seeing a colleague blamed for this tragedy. Would this type of punitive action against a CFSA employee improve the chances that a job-seeking social worker would consider CFSA?

I am a social worker who works for DC Public Schools. I have never worked for CFSA but was taught by people who worked their and have worked with colleagues who have as well. I was constantly told when I was a grad student and intern that CFSA was a great place to work to gain experience in the social work field. However, they also spoke about how people do not last in those positions because the pay does not match the work. Former employees of CFSA spoke about the impossibility of managing their assigned caseloads and the ever-present fear of a situation just like this one. They knew that if something went wrong on one of their caseloads, that they would be made a public scapegoat. That doesn't sound like a place I want to work.

So it is no surprise that CFSA caseworkers are overworked and burn out at a high rate. Take a look at the pay scale for a social worker with CFSA.

http://www.cfsa.dc.gov/cfsa/cwp/view,a,3,q,519648.asp

48,000 dollars is not a great starting salary for a person just out of grad school. However, 80,000 dollars per year as the maximum salary for a clinical social worker is very poor. How is CFSA supposed to retain employees when there is such a low ceiling on their salaries? Would you stay in crappy job if you knew you would never be paid well based off of what you do? The only people who are likely to stay very long in a job with this type of workload and low pay are the people who are satisfied doing mediocre work for a mediocre paycheck. Those are exactly the type of people that Fenty and the rest of the DC government do not want in their organization!

If Fenty wants CFSA to work better and help save lives in DC, then he doesn't need to assign blame. He needs to provide help. As a DCPS employee I know teachers who have been in the system for over 30 years. They make six figures for a 10 month position in which they work from 8:00 to 3:30. THATS NOT EVEN AN EIGHT HOUR DAY! Do I think these people deserve this type of compensation? Most of them do. So why isn't a CFSA caseworker who works a tougher job, with longer hours and for a full 12 months compensated as well?

The solution for CFSA is to hire more caseworkers. In order to do this, Mayor Fenty and the city need to show the public that they will support these people. Pay them better! It sounds like an imperfect solution, but one of the best ways to avoid burnout is to compensate people well. Retention and recruitment of CFSA employees would increase with better pay. This would result in smaller caseloads at CFSA, which would allow for a higher quality of intervention with families such as the one in this case. That is the way that you keep children from falling through the crack...not by giving another black eye to the people over at CFSA! When crime rates go up, politicians are quick to call for an increase in the hiring of police officers. So when children die, why aren't politicians proposing solutions to help improve hiring at child welfare agencies?

There were some other things that concerned me as I read about this story. One quote I read was extremely troublesome...

Family members filled three rows of the courtroom behind her but declined to comment after the proceedings.

What? There were enough family members of this woman to fill three rows of a courtroom, but none of them had intervened with the family over the last year. They did interview one woman who claimed to be a godmother to two of the children. She stated that she had stopped by the house on several occassions to drop off public assistance checks, but that the mother had denied her entry into the house. I'm sorry...but the children should be more important then the welfare check! How can you leave a check with this woman if she hasn't even let you see the children. If she denied me access to see my godchildren, then I would have other family members, the police, and CFSA with ME to get in and see those children. Its inexcusable that family members did not do more to save those children and help this woman get help.

The other issue that was raised concerned the involvement of schools in this situation. Apparently the mother withdrew the children from school, which reveals a lack of accountability in the District's school system. The children were attending two different charter schools before they were pulled out, and this was the statement from DC Public Charter School Board Nona Richardson...

"If parents opt to home-school a student, there "is no way of following" them, she said.
She said neither the board nor the schools tracked the students after the mother pulled them out of school.

This is a big problem with DC's school system. DC Public Schools are currently facing a decline in enrollment, largely because of the drastic increase in public charter schools. While some of the charter schools have done well, others have been failures. Most public charter schools in DC see little or no change in the performance of their students when compared to traditional DC public schools. I don't see how the DC Public Charter School Board is better equipped to handle student tracking than DCPS. Apparently from the quote above, they have not set into place guidelines to monitor what happens to their students once they leave their individual school. This is a flaw with the charter school system. One of the above articles mentions...
The school system's home-school office requires parents to fill out a form to obtain approval to withdraw their children from the schools. But the charter schools have no such policy.
While charter schools are very popular with some people, I think many of them can be inadequate. This shows a problem specific to the DC charter school system in general.

One thing I did like to see in the Post was that the school social worker at Booker T. Washington Public Charter School made an effort to help the family early on. She made two visits within a week to the home to inquire about the prolonged absence of the oldest daughter. She contacted the police and CFSA to intervene as well, but those interventions were not successful. Its unfortunate that her actions did not lead to help from the other agencies. However, this shows the value that a social worker can have in a school. Since a troubled parent will often avoid help, it is important that we have people in our schools that are there to help these troubled children. School might be the best place to identify children who are having difficult times at home.

Most employees in DC's government and citizens of the city will be quick to tell others that the Districts's government is filled with flaws. This tragic story, while ultimatley a tale of what mental illness can lead to when untreated, also shows that the District could improve its services to residents across all agencies. The charter schools, police department, and CFSA all had opportunities to intervene, and none of them were able to help prevent this event from happening. I hope Mayor Fenty and his administrators will help create solutions to make the District government more efficient in dealing with potential similar situations, rather than place blame on the individual employees who came into contact with this case!

Finally I would like to make a plug for adoption and foster care. I have worked with children who have been sent back to live in homes with parents who are drug addicts and refusing to accept treatment for mental illness. The District, CFSA, and most importantly the kids need people who have the means to help, to reach out and provide a safe place for neglected and abused children to live. This is a way that concerned citizens can truly help make for a better community.

http://www.cfsa.dc.gov/cfsa/cwp/view,a,3,q,520649,cfsaNav,%7C31319%7C.asp

http://www.cfsa.dc.gov/cfsa/cwp/view,a,3,q,521279,cfsaNav,%7C31319%7C.asp