I was surprised by Dennis
Taylor’s column on Wednesday. Not because he read and wrote about the civil
grand jury’s report, “Family and Children’s Services – A Stressful Place to
Work;” but because it appears he skipped over many basic journalistic
principles and failed to recognize the inherent challenges with the mission of
Family and Children’s Services. The first three statements of the Society of
Professional Journalists Code of Ethics are that journalists should:
•Take responsibility for the
accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original
sources whenever possible.
•Remember that neither speed
nor format excuses inaccuracy.
•Provide context. Take special
care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or
summarizing a story.
I know of no supervisor or
manager in Family and Children’s Services that he talked to, and I am surprised
that he appears to have only used the secondary source of information contained
in the grand jury’s report to offer judgment on the work of many fine employees.
To provide some of the missing
context, at the Department of Social Services we are always balancing several
competing priorities:
•Effective service delivery to
the community we serve – in the case of Family and Children’s Services,
protection of abused and neglected children.
•Supporting staff to meet the
difficult demands of the work we are expected to achieve – in the case of
Family and Children’s Services, social workers have the difficult job of
assessing reports of abuse and neglect, arranging for the safety of children
when necessary, and accurately documenting their assessments so that if future
reports are received the next worker has the necessary history.
•Managing within resources
allocated by the taxpayers of our county, state and country for serving the
most vulnerable children.
Indeed, working in Child
Protective Services is stressful.
•Investigating reports of child
abuse and neglect takes an emotional toll – the circumstances of childhood
trauma are heart wrenching and complex.
•It is high pressure – the
immediate safety and well-being of vulnerable children is at stake.
•It is difficult – social
workers work within a complex legal framework that balances the rights of
children to be safe and the rights of families to liberty. They work closely
with childhood trauma and families who have many challenges to overcome. Their
work product is reviewed by many.
•It is accountable – there are
state and federal requirements for documentation of casework. Locally, the
department is committed to continuous quality improvement efforts that include
quality assurance reviews of casework. When children are brought into
protective custody, the social workers case management is also overseen by the
Superior Court, and separate attorneys for the child, the parents, and the
county.
There is no way to remove much
of the stress, and the department recognizes this. As a result, the department
does its best to help social workers manage the workload and stressors, while
still respecting the need for accountability. We make sure all new social
workers receive 24 days of training across two months during their first year
of service. We start inexperienced workers out with lower caseloads across
their nine-month probationary period. We assure workers complete 40 hours of
in-service training every two years. We offer employees flexible work schedules
when they are able to meet job requirements. We offer overtime pay for the
extra hours of work necessary to get the job done (for the majority who are
overtime exempt, this is paid at the regular pay rate per our MOU). We
accommodate many extended leave requirements for health and family issues,
which at times increases workload pressures. And, contrary to the grand jury’s
findings and Mr. Taylor’s statement, we do make sure supervisors, social
workers and managers meet regularly. This includes daily partnership on case
work and formal monthly conferences.
This is not all: As soon as the
morale issues were raised by staff we reached out to the union to schedule
labor-management team meetings. And, of course we are always striving to
improve our workplace and morale. We will give serious consideration to the
grand jury’s recommendations and more importantly, the input from our dedicated
team of social workers.
While we balance several
competing priorities, child protection is THE priority. Sometimes during
continuing training sessions, a report of child abuse is received that requires
immediate response. I am comforted that the responsibility to respond is not
put off until later if a needed worker is in a training class. I am comforted
by the expectation that social workers document their casework so if a new
report of abuse or neglect is received it can be more effectively assessed. I
am comforted that when the data showed children in our community began
experiencing higher rates of re-maltreatment, we had a quality improvement
process looking for practical solutions to improve our practice. We work
together from social worker to supervisor to manager to make sure we have an
accountable system. This is not always an easy process.
But what matters first is the
well-being of children and families. To that end, we are proud as an
organization that we are successfully able to only disrupt families when
absolutely necessary for the safety of children. This is demonstrated by low
placement rates in foster care — our rate of placement in foster care is
currently the eighth lowest in the state. At the same time, it is also
absolutely critical that our decisions result in low rates of recurring
maltreatment. The rate for child abuse and neglect recurring is lower than
statewide.
However, as a department we aim
to bring our rate of recurrence back to where it traditionally stood, among the
lowest in the state. When the department began seeing increasing re-abuse rates
occurring last year we began doing the work that the community expects of us –
to do everything in our power to prevent abuse and neglect of children from
occurring again.
We only need read The
Californian over the past few months to know how devastating child abuse can be
in the life of a child. The efforts of the whole Family and Children’s Services
team to serve families and protect children should be commended, not vilified.
June
25, 2015
The
Salinas Californian
By Elliott
Robinson, director of the Monterey County Department of Social Services
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