An Elegant Solution....In Three Acts

Awash in a sea of educated individuals for seven years, I found I earned my PhD in foster care reform not in the halls of a classroom, but instead, amongst the countless foster homes, foster brothers, foster sisters, social workers, judges, lawyers, therapists, etc. that acted in and upon my life; in charge not because they were smarter than me, but because they were old and more in charge than me. With that PhD, I struck out in the years since emancipation to understand and suggest by this a solution to the foster care system. Insert bad statistics here.

A solution to the myriad of shameful statistics emerging from the ranks of the 700,000 youths whose lives are touched daily by foster care. In three parts, the solution takes form starting first with the role of the social worker, then foster parents (paying the piper), and finally education (let the rain sun shine down). Too many Band-Aids have been applied to the point of immobility for each and every actor amongst and entrenched in the systems. Its time to rip off the bandages.

ACT I: Social Worker

The solution to FIX the foster care system does not involve addition. Reform up till now has consisted of adding layer upon layer of fixes, a solution is added onto the previous fix, till the Frankenstein ambles distractedly and with ill-grace awry from an intended elegant design. No more addition let us subtract.

The benign design of a bureaucracy with no grand vision is the progenitor the albatross of Foster Care. Each politician, each level of government adds yet another layer. Foster care as it currently exists is a partnership between locality, municipality, county, regional, state and federal systems of governance. Surprisingly, this is not where one can find the solution, although this is where a whole range of energy is spent in searching.

Social Workers

The day to day of foster care is not glamorous and seldom grabs headlines. Instead, it is the sensational news of yet another tragedy, another death, another child reunited then killed that strikes upon the conscience, perhaps ego of each of our collective social conscience.

Each time a foster kid is misplaced, killed after reuniting with the biological family, killed by a foster parent, or otherwise physically molested, the headlines echo the ritchously indignant chants of the mob. Blame is felled up on the well-meaning social worker; and the Monday Night Quarterbacks dissect her performance, chanting OFF WITH HER HEAD! Let's face it, the attention span of the media and the public at large is short lived at best, and the story falls by the wayside once some 'accountability' is dumped upon the social worker. As long as someone is at fault then this the incident is an outlying occurrence, something unusual and not to be repeated.

Yet, it is repeated, in spirit if not form youth are being killed by the tens of thousands each year. The startling statistics prove what we occasionally acknowledge: less then 50% graduating high school; embarrassingly large numbers of the young female foster youth alumnae emancipating to motherhood; shameful mobs of young male foster youth emancipating to homelessness, jail, and dysfunctional relationships. The system has stripped them of their future, when the intervention by the state should have done the opposite.

Instead of adding yet another level of mob-demanded accountability, let's empower the social worker to do her job. How?

Let her do her job. With forty plus youth under her care, social workers accomplish the impossible on a monthly basis. Visits to each foster youth in the home; meetings with teachers; escorting youth to visit their parents in jail, visits to the doctors, visits to the dentist, and visits to other siblings. In excess, the social worker risks their very lives in detaining kids - that is, they go into a home and remove kids after a smell test comes back with sulfur. Layered on top of this is the state's aim for accountability, reporting.

Reporting to her supervisor, the courts, the families, and the press at times and of course the various supporting bureaucracies. Most time is spent shuffling papers. And lest one forget, when that social worker walks into a home, foster youth or biological child of the foster family, are clients too. As is often the case, when there is one case of abuse or neglect, their likely exist others.

The elegant solution here is to let the social worker do her job. Halve, or further reduce, the case load by introducing a federal maximum of youths allowed per social worker. So many organizations have recommended limits in terms of case loads, but intuitively, let's put it at twelve. By elegant subtraction, that social worker will have less paperwork, less travel, and more attention per youth.

A long sustained relationship with a social worker is good for youth and social worker. Instead of a never-ending parade of social workers, the youth can build a relationship with a social worker that builds a loyalty to that youth. By deduction, that social worker will also develop a caring relationship with that youth. What is more, the social worker's perspective on the youth will be long-term and focused by sustained interaction. The history of the case, the family, education, mental and physical needs, will be retained not in a file handed like a baton from one runner to the next, but will be carried by the marathoner social worker to the finish line.

To play devil's advocate... what about reducing the bureaucracy of the system as a means to give caseworkers more time for the kids on their caseload? Have we built a system bogged down by so much paperwork - in the name of protecting children - that we don't have time to actually protect kids?

One example: workers must determine a kid's eligibility for IV-E federal funding based on the bio parent's income... which is sort of a joke... How'd you like to track down income for biological parents, who generally live on the edge of society and who I'd guess are either reluctant or unable to provide documented proof of income. Shouldn't we be providing for any American child that's been determined to be abused, neglected or abandoned by our courts - especially if it's severe enough to warrant removal from the parent's custody?

Caseloads could also be reduced if there weren't as many kids in foster care. States should be able to use their funding to provide preventive services that would prevent kids from coming in to foster care in the first place... for example, lots of kids enter care b/c of a family's homelessness, yet a state can't use federal child welfare funds to provide housing support until the kid is already in care. I've become more aware over the years of the damage done by taking a kid into care - it completely rocks a family and, particularly for an older child who has any awareness about what's going on, causes a trauma that can never be erased or "put back".

On the other end of things, if there were less disincentives for adoption - less roadblocks (i.e. gay family adoptions), we'd have a whole lot less kids in care. Either way, when a kid lands in care, they need a ready & able social worker, not themselves drowning in paperwork.

Positive Externalities of Better Paid Social Workers

One thing I've learned... despite all of the lines we've drawn and boxes we've established to craft a foster care system with checks and balances and protocol, there's still a lot of guesswork. Family systems and relationships are hugely complicated, and each case is full of variables that could never be captured in a manual chock full o' administrative rules... therefore a caseworker's job is full of best guesses and good intentions. More often than not, with experience come better outcomes. We need to retain these seasoned professionals, not constantly refill the ranks as burnout leads to attrition. When things go wrong, like a reunified parent goes off the deep end or a foster parent sneaks by the psych evaluations and is certified despite being a few bricks short, is it really fair to place blame on the worker, when the system has designed the workers to be overwhelmed with even the basic performance of what is asked of social workers.

The stress that workers are under in deciding the future of children and their families is HUGE. Place on top of that knowledge that they'll be hung out to dry if something should go south... well, who would want to work under those conditions?

Decrease the caseload; increase the sense of accomplishment and commitment to the foster youth, and the foster care system will decrease the ceaseless attrition of experienced social workers.

Pay them More

It is truly all about the Benjamins - that is, the pay. Having a qualitatively better job may not be enough to truly the lift the social work profession out of the morass it currently lives in.

In brief, let's double the salary in real income or by invention. Firstly, one option is to make the profession one where people compete for well-paid jobs in an industry that is not hunted by mobs at the occasional news of a death. This would be an absolute cash raise.

Let the fiscal mob be at bay, because there is another economic incentive to recruit, retain and reward social workers for the important work done - that is a salary increase by invention. If the goal is to financially compensate, then let's discuss benefits. Currently, the profession is the beneficiary of substantial amounts of union-won health and welfare benefits. To incentives, creativity might call for innovation through taxes. That is, can we reduce their tax burden, or make them progressively 'tax free,' through a progressive escalating scale rewarded through not only time of service, but quality of service to foster youth.

Yet, might we not also consider allowing their children to go to state colleges and universities for 'free,' with preferred admissions. That would incentivize a whole host of new recruits, who must still meet the professional standards.

Housing through the urban renaissance of the last decade has become prohibitively expensive for social workers. They live hours from their offices, and then on top of that drive thousands of miles monthly to visit their foster youth. Based on the fire fighter and police programs, could the state come up with a way to allow for home loan assistance, preferred mortgages, and state backed loans? Reduced property tax is another way that might allow their small salaries to stretch to allow these professionals to live in the communities where they work.

To recap, it seems to me that we need to:

Social worker support is key to improving the system. Here's what we need to do: Firstly, decrease case loads; Secondly, Increase pay and benefits by either an absolute salary increase and or through alternative compensation such as Loan Forgiveness, Home Loan Assistance and or Access for Social Work families into preferred programs.

This is simply Act I, when we move on to Act II, we will discuss Recruitment and Training of Foster Parents; and finally with Act II, we'll see how the world of Foster Care Reform looks from through the eyes of foster youth.

Comments

[rlehman]

In North Carolina today is a 9 year old child who has been removed from his parents' home (along with an older brother and an older sister) and who has been placed in a foster home where the foster mother is under investigation by CPS and whose own children have been removed from her care. This is the third home he has been in since being removed from his parents' home. The older brother has now been moved three times (since October) and the sister (who, it had been determined required a 'therapeutic' setting) has been placed with a fundamentalist Christian who has not allowed the girl any activities outside the home as they are 'un-Christian'. She and her brothers have been reared as pagans. This is also the third home she has been in since October.

These children were removed because the youngest two children had brought home fists full of stolen candy for about the fifth time in two weeks. Their father handcuffed them to dining room chairs in an effort to show them what might be eventual consequences to their actions.

Since having their children taken from them the parents' have done everything they have been directed to do by CPS all the while being told they aren't being cooperative.

None of us who are aware of what is going on blame the social workers involved. They are truly trying to follow the law and do their jobs. But, when does CPS become accountable for the neglect and abuse of the children that goes on under their authority? Being moved to three different homes in less than six months is abuse to my mind and being taken from your parents and then placed with someone under investigation by the very same agency which has taken you from everything you have ever known is at the very least gross negligence.

[Clinton]

Excellent post. Social workers are overwhelmed, similar to nurses. This needs to be fixed.