hughesthewho

One of the reasons I wanted to do this AMA is for this very reason. The media, and public sometimes, is very critical of what we do. To the media: either we remove a child when we shouldn't have, or didn't do anything when we should have. You never hear the happy, or successful stories, on the news. Unfortunately, we tend to be a closed-mouth system, for fear of breaking confidentiality. I think that's a mistake. We can talk about what we do, without hurting our clients.

I am very sorry for your ex's experience with us. Like all professions, mistakes are made. One area I am championing my state's CPS system to improve, is how we work with Domestic Violence (DV) involved families, especially the women. This woman in your example was asking for help, and was punished for it. That's not acceptable, and not what all of us get into this work to do! It makes me upset, I can't imagine how it made her feel.

I have seen sitauations come to me (I'm in the latter half of the system, when investigations have already happened), that I don't necessarily agree with decisions that were made. In those case I work to right it as quickly as possible, and my supervisor will do the "agency work" to figure out why it happened in the first place.

Pretty much :) That's ok though. We'll survive.

We do what we do for folks like you (Dr. Seuss Anyone??) Thanks for you comment and I hope your mom is doing better.

At one point I was working with a family where the father, who I didn't work with directly (another co-worker was teaming the case with me) worked at a nearby store. A personal friend of mine also worked at that store, and would talk about that co-worker and thinking he was cute. It was definitely difficult for me personally in those conversations to not reveal that I knew that person, and the intimate details of his life. Any time I see a client in the community, I will pretend to not know them, to spare them from having to explain WHY they know me. Sometimes clients don't care, and will say "Hi."

There's a lot that comes to mind. Probably the physical abuse stuff. We take them to get examined, and one little boy (about a year and a half) had lacerations and bone-breaks in different stages of healing. He was just so little. Breaks your heart to think of the pain that kiddo knew to be daily reality. It's our job to work with those parents though, and work through what led them to that in the first place, and heal.

Also, anytime a kid has burns. Burns are the worst.