Confessions of a Child Protective Services Drop-out

It seems that every week, you see stories about children being unfairly ripped from the homes of their parents for some incomprehensible reason – like accidentally forgetting to pay for a sandwich. Within the hour, you’ll see another story about a child whose loved ones begged and pleaded for help from the state, and those pleas fell upon deaf ears until it was too late to save the child. You see stories about children being abused or neglected in foster homes and stories about children suffering tragic consequences after being returned prematurely to an unsafe family of origin.  All of these stories have the same tone – the state agency obliged to protect the welfare of the child failed, and the consequences of that failure were fatal.

The media gobbles up these stories and spits out sensationalist headlines and biased opinions. Why? Because these stories combine two elements that grab public attention and incite outrage and cries of injustice – combining child abuse and failure of public officials is the coup de grâce of news media.

If these failures are so appalling to the public whether the state acts or fails to act, then why do they keep happening? Why do they happen over and over again in agencies all over the country that are run in fundamentally different ways? No one has a perfect answer to that question, but I'd like to offer my experience as an insight into the challenges of that work.

Here’s my story in brief: I was working as a sexual assault advocate in a large urban environment, where our biggest challenge was a particularly aggressive gang, whose modus operandi was to brutally sexually assault the female companions of their rivals with blunt objects as a means of retaliation. There were plenty of other terrible things that I laid witness to each day, but this group was particularly challenging, in part because if the woman I comforted while a nurse stitched her back up ever revealed who caused such suffering, she and her loved ones were in imminent mortal danger. I recall at least a dozen victims, and the detectives and I never got a single name, description, or even an answer to a follow-up call. I saw this time and again, and there was little I could do. Getting up to this every day was exhausting because, essentially, the very idea of seeking my help would cause these women more harm, and I became a threat rather than an advocate. As a pregnant woman, the physical risks I incurred as part of this investigation led me to daydream of greener pastures. I wanted to move on to a place where I could really make a difference in an immediate and direct way. I wanted to protect people who needed my help, and I wanted to work in an environment where the little person I was carrying inside me would be less likely to be harmed as I went about my daily business.

I accepted a position as an abuse investigator in a rural county nearby. The pay was good, and I saw direct ways in which I could make a difference when a case passed across my desk. So many of my former clients had bemoaned their caseworkers and the system in general, but I had seen the nitty gritty. I had heard the stories of the mothers whose children had been removed, and I had helped them fight to regain custody of their children. I had been on the other side, and I thought I could bring new perspective that would perhaps alter outcomes for children and families.

I was assigned to the Special Investigations Unit, which meant that we only received the ugliest of cases and our caseloads were much smaller because of the complexity of the cases. My max caseload was nine per 30 days. I started my first case on a Monday, and by Friday I had 18 cases. The reason? There were only four of us taking the “ugly” cases, and that was my fair share of the flood of cases pouring in. There were no tax dollars available to increase the number of caseworkers in the SIU, so that’s what we got.

Now, here I am thinking that I can make a difference. I want to complete thorough investigations, and ensure that the children whose cases left my desk were treated in the most advantageous way possible.  Within that first week, I met a little girl who tearfully told a cousin, and then me, that her father had sexually abused her. After the interview, I asked the father to leave the house until the investigation was complete, and he obliged.

Two days later, as I sat in their home, the little girl’s mother told me the financial woes they were experiencing because of the change in the household. They didn’t have money to pay the electric bill. She didn’t know where their next meal would come from. Why? Because this little girl told this story about her daddy.

That day, when I talked with the little girl, what did she say? Can you guess?? That’s right. She made it all up, and she was sorry. She was just telling stories, and everything got out of hand. Of course this made me uneasy, so I arranged another interview with a pediatric forensic psychologist. I watched via closed circuit television as she tearfully recanted and said she was sorry, and she just wanted daddy back so the lights would stay on.

This was one of about 20 cases on my supposedly 9 case max load. I had 30 days to close the case, and I had no substantiation that anything had happened. The little girl admitted to lying. My supervisor pressed me hard for a closed case, and I had 19 other families who needed my time and attention, too. What could I do? I inquired, and we had no funds to provide emergency assistance to the family. What were my options? I closed that case. Dad went home, the lights stayed on, and the little girl learned never to tell anyone what happened behind closed doors.

That was only one of the gut-wrenching cases that I witnessed during my time there. Like any other public agency, child protective services caseworkers must adhere strictly to the law. Unlike many practitioners responsible for life and death decisions, though, they are bound to do it in as few hours as possible because there is very little financial support for what they do and so very many children and families in unsafe situations.

I lasted less than four months in that position. During that time, an infant died in a house fire intentionally set by her mother. A child whose case had been closed as “unsubstantiated” only a few weeks before. The caseworker was fired and sued. The supervisor was demoted. Did this change anything about the way cases were handled? No. How could it? In most of these cases, there is little direct and documented evidence that any harm has come or will come to these children.

In good conscience, I was unable to continue to work in life or death situations where the institutional goal was to close each case within 30 days per state statute, rather than to ensure the safety of children first and foremost. I left my position feeling deeply remorseful, and it took me quite a long time to recover from the grief I felt for some of the children I met.

A year after I left, a child was severely abused and killed in foster care. The caseworker was blamed because she failed to conduct routine checks on the home as mandated. Yet, she had dozens of foster homes on her caseload, and this child was placed nearly two hours away from the agency. There is no money for overtime, and there is only so much that can be accomplished in 40 hours per week.

There have since been huge organizational changes to the institution where I worked during those tumultuous months, and I certainly hope things are incrementally improved. However, after reading case after case in the news media, in which caseworkers are blamed for child mortality, I am left with the sense that we cannot improve dramatically upon the outcomes for child victims until we fundamentally change our perception of the causes of child mortality.

Caseworkers are asked to do the impossible – both in terms of the amount of time required to discover the truth about the history and wellbeing of a vulnerable child, and in terms of their ability to predict the future. How can they be expected to accomplish either consistently in a culture that vilifies them at every opportunity?

When you hear a news story about a shooting, and it is mentioned that “The police had been called to the residence on multiple occasions,” the immediate response is not to blame the police for failing to adequately intervene. There may be some question about police response, but the implication of that statement is that this troublesome situation had been out of control for a long time.

We cannot continue to vilify the individuals responsible for protecting vulnerable children and expect them not to simply follow the letter of the law – make the requisite contacts, collect the requisite evidence, tidy up the file in case of future lawsuit, and move the problem off their desk and out of their mind.

The problem of child abuse and subsequent child mortality does not begin and end with the caseworker. This is a community problem. One we must each accept responsibility for. One we must each acknowledge as a reality in our neighborhoods and our schools. We must each offer love and support to children and to struggling parents. Doctors and midwives should adequately screen for domestic violence and postpartum psychological problems. Pediatricians should ask how new parents are coping and listen genuinely to problems and concerns. Neighbors should ask if parents need a casserole when their colicky baby is keeping them up all night. Teachers should let their students know that they can confide in them if they are worried. Everyone should be aware of community resources for parents struggling emotionally, economically, or spiritually, and be willing to offer help if needed. If we each provide the opportunity for parents and children to reach out for support, no one potential intervener would be singularly responsible when tragedy happens.

None of these things require the state to incur additional financial responsibility, they can be done in a matter of moments, and they can mean the difference between life and death for a child who may never see the overworked and undervalued caseworker everyone expects to swoop in and save the day.