What’s Wrong with Child Welfare?

Despite the theories on internet chat boards that we chose this profession because we hate children and families and want to spend our lives destroying them for shitty pay (albeit, I can understand from whence this speculation arises), I work for the agency because I care about kids. As a result, my decisions with regards to kids are child-welfare-driven (i.e. the welfare of the children takes precedence) rather than CYA-driven. This is not the typical “CYA” that is inspired by self-preservation and that we all do, though we shouldn’t be proud of it, to some extent. The type of CYA to which I refer is not borne of self-efficiency and diligence, rather this pervasive CYA is much more insidious.  That is cover your agency at all costs and the lives if children and families are but incidental considerations.

I have been in CW only 10 years, yet I have always been at odds with it. As vocations go, it’s a whole different animal. I have had the same argument with every supervisor(and most of my co-workers) in every division and in two different states. The irony is that I know I’m right and they know they’re right. The difference is that I base my opinion on the research of the experts. I am not arrogant enough to simply assume that I know what’s right for children and families. I consult the “experts.”

What is new, for me, is the realization “why?” Why have I always felt like a fish-out-of-water in Child Welfare? Why do I have friends that couldn’t remain in Child Welfare? Why am I in constant vocational turmoil and threat of termination when the average American and congressional subcommittees and child protection experts agree with me consistently and emphatically, It has, to my chagrin, finally become evident that the majority of the American public, those that agree vehemently with me (and Wayne Holder, etc.) cannot tolerate working in Child Welfare for any length of time.  So, the status-quo continues, and always will.  Children and families be damned.

from WASTED by Patrick T. Murphy

 

It’s probably important to remember when you read these quotes that Mr. Murphy was an immediate response worker in New York City…where they really don’t have time to micro-manage marginal families…

“In truth, public Child Welfare agencies will never be satisfactory.  We give them children who’s spirits have been crushed by oafish parents and expect the agency to put the kids’ psyches back together.”

“The Child Welfare system has failed children because it refuses to distinguish between parents who are ill-equipped to raise there kids adequately without help, and parents who are too immature or thuggish to raise children even with help.  To the system, all parents are victims, irrespective of their crimes or potential for reform.  And, the parent, not the child, is the client.”

“Guilt and responsibility, pillars of the criminal justice system, are alien concepts in the juvenile justice arena…the parent’s abusive acts become irrelevant once the juvenile court determines that the child has been abused.  Instead, the courts and the child welfare bureaucracy are responsible for providing services to the parent(s).”

“In the present system, the parent’s victim status becomes more important than the child’s neglect.”

“Self-described child advocates have sloganized ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ in order to relieve bad parents of blame for abusing their children or of the responsibility for raising them as adequately as their resources permit.  Indeed ‘it takes a village’ has become an incantation to ward off those who dare to suggest that with parenthood comes individual responsibility.  The village can indeed provide the family with a friendly environment, but only a parent can raise a child.”

“In juvenile court, parents who have abused their children are frequently sent to parenting classes.  I have always thought this was a waste.  The time to teach people to parent is when they themselves are children.  Classes ought to be held regularly for all children at the grammar school and high school levels, concentrating on the responsibilities of parenthood.”

“Too many child welfare types can’t bring themselves to admit that there are cowards and bullies who are good at having babies but incapable of nurturing their children, with or without multiservice centers.  They abuse their kids and ultimately lose them because down deep they never wanted them.”

“We force children to stay with people whose only connection to parenthood is a roll in the hay nine months before the child is born.”

…true enough, but Mr. Murphy need remember we ‘force’ children to stay with their parents because we have no where better to put them!  The state makes an even lousier parent!

Two-Headed Dragon

“Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known”
-President Barrack Obama 1/25/09

Powerful (sounding) words that, in reality, amount to nothing more than lip-service and political/bureaucratic rhetoric.  Of course, when our current president uttered these words at his inauguration, he never said they would be without sacrifice.

Now I know, first hand, that my union is not interested in protecting the Constitutional rights of individual workers. Rather, like government itself, the sole purpose of contemporary unions is to grow, in wealth and power.

Of course, why would a worker in opposition to the state’s abuse of power, expect his rights to be protected when those same rights, among Child Welfare clientele, are violated on a daily basis?

In ten years as a Child Protective Services caseworker, it had already become evident to me how, for 35 years, CPS has been able to run unopposed from within despite an egregiously un-American mode of operation: Simply get rid of those insiders who raise concerns about the status-quo.  And, apparently with Union help.