The Option for Sabbaticals

A day after Thanksgiving, I am able to reflect on how calming and heartening it is to spend the day away from work and with my family and friends.  It made me think about child welfare and the limited opportunities agencies offer their workers to “escape” from the work.  When social workers don’t get breaks from the job or have a healthy work-life balance, the chance of burn-out greatly increases.  CNN money recently published a study that found social work as the top stressful job that pays badly— a perfect recipe for worker burn-out and worker turnover.

A social worker that is burned out is a liability for an agency.  Typically, jaded and fatigued workers are less efficient, less effective, and care less about the outcomes of their job.  Do we really want these workers to continue to protect and serve children and families? 

One option an agency could offer is to allow workers who are feeling burned-out an opportunity to take extended leave—a sabbatical of sorts.  Now, offering a sabbatical with paid leave is wishful thinking for public agencies however, I believe just having the option to take 1-3 months off work (using leave or unpaid) would greatly benefit social workers.  It would offer them a chance to reinvigorate, recharge batteries, and hopefully gain perspective and insight and return to work a much more productive and valuable employee.  

We believe in respite care for parents and foster parents, why not “respite leave” for our social workers?

-Sarah

A New Way to Practice: Strengths-Based

Social work practice, particularly in child welfare, often tends toward a problem-identifying and problem-solving model. However, the strengths-based model is growing in popularity and is being taught in most graduate social work programs today.

Strengths-based practice is defined as:

“… a social work practice theory that emphasizes people’s self determination and strengths. Strengths based practice is client led, with a focus on future outcomes and strengths that the people bring to a problem or crisis.”    Healy, Karen (2005). Social Work Theories in Context. Hampshire: Palgrave McMillan.

The model focuses on how a social worker approaches a client and the questions used during interviewing to move the client towards their own solution based on past successes. A strengths-based practice requires the social worker to approach a client with the assumption that the client is more knowledgeable about their problem and solution than the worker. The model also requires the worker utilize specific types of questions that guide the client to realize their strengths and ways in which they are able to rectify their own situations. It gives the client power to change his/her own situations for the better.

Tips and examples of strengths-based practice can be found here.

Using this practice in child welfare can empower families to make the necessary changes to keep their children at home. It is also effective when used directly with children to instill in them that they do have power to affect their situation and there is hope for the future.

-Heidi

What is so difficult about child welfare work anyhow?

I have come to expect that after I introduce myself and respond to the question about what I do for work that I will get a response such as “that must be difficult” or “I could never do it.” What it is that people believe is so difficult about child welfare work? And why is it truly difficult?

Common  assumptions:

Child welfare workers…

• are underpaid
• lack the necessary training
• work long hours
• interact with unruly and/or traumatized kids
• are unwelcome by parents

What the common person does not know:

Child welfare workers believe their job is difficult (at least from my experience) as they…

• complete loads of paperwork
• worry about losing their job for an unpreventable incident
• are lacking in quality supervision and support in the workplace
• carry too many cases to spend the needed time with clients
• wish for more clinical practice

In summary, although many assumptions are correct at times and present various challenges, most are accepted and even to be expected. However, it is the second list that, from my conversations with colleagues, defines the real difficulties of the job—these are the pieces that are unseen to the public, but that often lead to dissatisfaction in the field.

Heidi

Supporting Front-Line Workers

Child welfare agencies should always be looking for ways to support front-line workers to prevent burn-out, social worker turnover, and ensure that high quality services are being delivered to families and children.  To assist front-line workers with providing quality services, I would like to see each agency have a position that can act as a Researcher/Resource Worker who can answer questions and provide relevent and helpful information to front-line workers.   

With high caseloads and numerous home visits to make (travel time in rural areas and high traffic areas can eat into hours of one’s day), front-line workers have little extra free time.  While it would be ideal, it’s unrealistic to expect front-line workers  to read and research the latest best practice methods in child welfare or mental health practice.  The purpose of the Researcher/Resource Worker would be to provide succinct, up to date, evidence-based information to front-line workers.

 

Social workers would email the Researcher/Resource Worker questions such as:

• I’m working with a family who hoards and there are unsanitary living conditions.  What’s the best method for working with this family? or
• What type of therapy is recommended for a parent diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder?  or
• I’ve been working with a family for 9 months with chronic neglect problems and nothing seems to be improving.  What are some different approaches to working with chronic neglect issues?

The Researcher/Resource Worker could tease out the most helpful information and email it back to the front-line worker.  This prevents the front-line worker from spending time researching and reading long journal articles but ensures that the front-line worker is learning about the latest research and recommendations in the field.  The front-line worker could then take this information and frame it in a useful way to deliver high quality services to families and children and hopefully prevent families from re-entering the child welfare system. 

-Sarah

Engaging Fathers

Over the last several years, the child welfare system has started to modify its approach and focus significant efforts on locating and partnering with fathers to engage with their children and assume caretaking responsibilities.  It has long been felt that the child welfare system and the child support system have been biased towards mothers.  But as we look to preserve children with their biological families and prevent foster care placements, it is natural (and ethical practice) to seek fathers and/or their kin as placement options. 

However, fathers face barriers that mothers may not have and tend to parent differently.  The community and child welfare system are good at implementing supports for mothers to care better for their children, but what resources are out there for fathers to have the ability to and become better parents for their children?  I find that we try to apply the same programs used for mothers and we find that one size does not fit all.

An Urban Institute paper notes that fathers viewed employment as critical to improving their lives.  Another paper highlights that men often think there are concrete answers to problems; therefore they must be taught that parenting is complex (Greif & DeMaris, 1990).  Fathers also have to work through struggles with their own societal and cultural stereotypes if they are to become primary caretakers. 

Fatherhood programs are behind in terms of evidence-based practice and evaluation, however they do exist.  What are some fatherhood programs and supports out there?    What makes them work or not work well?  

-Sarah

Added 7/29/09: One of my previous posts, Digital Play, could present with some wonderful opportunities for fathers to engage with their children.  New educational digital games are being promoted for children’s learning and health and could enhance bonding and learning between fathers and children.

Why Social Workers in Child Welfare? Part III of III

Part III: Better Outcomes for Children

Over two- thirds of public child welfare staff have no formal social work education.  Job turnover often exceeds 50% per year in the child welfare field (Child Welfare League of America).  The combination of these two statements have huge consequences for our nation’s most vulnerable children and families and affects the achievement of permanency and safety for children in the system.  I’ve argued in Part II of this series that child welfare workers should have a graduate education as research has found a positive correlation between MSWs and higher work commitment, better preparation for the work, and decreased turnover.  Agencies benefit when hiring and retaining employees with MSWs.  But most importantly, families benefit when child welfare agencies are staffed with MSWs.  Research has noted the following:

• Permanence for foster children is more likely to be achieved if staff have BSW or MSW degrees (Hess, Foloran, & Jefferson, 1992).
• Similarly, a Nevada study showed that caseworkers with a social work degree were more likely to create a permanent plan for foster children within 3 years than their colleagues without social work education (Albers, Reilly, & Rittner, 1993).
• Workers who acquire MSW degrees have a more positive view of clients (McGowan & Auerbach, 2004).

Thus far, the research indicates that social work education is the best preparation for child welfare work and produces better outcomes for children and families.  Agencies should embrace partnerships with social work schools to enhance learning and recruit MSWs, especially those Title IV-E students that are receiving specialized child welfare education.

-Sarah

Why Social Workers in Child Welfare? Part II of III

Part II: Should Child Welfare Workers Have MSWs?

Without hesitation, I believe that a child welfare worker should have a Masters in Social Work (MSW) or a related graduate degree.  We expect other professionals who handle peoples’ livelihoods to have extensive education, such as lawyers, doctors, and psychologists, and that expectation should be extended to child welfare workers.  Certainly, the MSW degree alone does not guarantee a quality social worker.  But it does increase the likelihood that MSW workers will base family (life-changing) decisions on federal and local laws, human behavior knowledge, and evidence-based practices instead of working from their “gut,” their biases, and perhaps their own unresolved issues.  It also holds them to a standard of ethics.  

For the past 15 years, the federal government has provided funding through Title IV-E of the Social Security Act to MSW schools who provide specialized education in child welfare.  The government realizes the necessity in having well-educated MSWs working in public child welfare.  Research also shows favorable outcomes when employing MSWs:

• Intent to stay [in the child welfare field] is related to ‘human caring’ and self-efficacy, which correlated with a social work degree (Ellett, 2000; Ellett, Ellett & Rugutt, 2003).
• Staff with social work degrees — and those who are IV-E trained — are most inclined to stay (Barbee, 2003; Harrison, 1995; Lewandowski, 1998; Jones, 2002; Okamura & Jones, 1995; Vinokur-Kaplan, 1991; Ellett, 2003).
• Decreased turnover is affected by professional BSW and MSW degrees.

-Information compiled by NASW

Part III of this series will highlight the positive outcomes for families when agencies are staffed by MSWs.

-Sarah

Why Social Workers in Child Welfare? Part I of III

Part I: The Professionalization of Social Work

“The emergence of a profession of social work, then, was related to what Robert Wiebe has called ‘the search for order’ in a ‘distended society.’  Ghettos and slums, the white plague, rising rates of crime, juvenile delinquency, the lack of provision for sanitation and public health, the psychological and economic dependency that arose from uncertain employment, low wages, industrial accidents, premature old age—these and other social hazards constituted problems in American life that good intentions alone could not dispel; the creation of schools for the training of social servants, social research and other highly technical skills, and professional discipline was essential.

 …It was commonly felt that social work consisted of little more than providing aid to people in need, and that no person or group could claim a monopoly on benevolence or could create a profession out of it…Only when social workers succeeded in convincing the public that not everyone with love in his or her heart could do the job, that social work consisted of more than benevolence and well-wishing, that it had a scientific as well as an ethical component, did they achieve professional recognition.” (page 234)

–From Poor Law to Welfare State, by Walter Trattner

-Sarah

Cyber Social Work

SIMS 3, the cyber world that allows you to create and control simulated characters, is due to be released this year.  One of the new features of SIMS 3 is that you can create a character that is a kleptomaniac.  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if social work schools and agencies could team with SIMS (or another cyber world creator) and create SIMS-like training modules that graduate students and/or new social workers could experience?  Training modules could have families that have various complex, real-life issues (alcoholism, death of the co-parent, and facing foreclosure) and social workers would have to practice what it would be like entering the family’s (cyber) home for the first time.  Social workers would be able to practice interviewing, assessment, counseling, and crisis intervention skills by interacting with these cyber families. 

Every social work student has had to suffer through endless role plays with fellow students and typically the role plays end up contrived and unrealistic.  But if we use the available technology, we could create state of the art training for social workers that would be realistic, interactive, and experiential.  Rookie mistakes could be teased out on cyber characters and not cause harm to any real person or family.  It would certainly take a tech-savvy, dare I say hip, school Dean or agency head to pursue this type of curriculum but hopefully it’s where the future is headed.        

-Sarah

Supervison or checklist?

Many social workers, particularly in front line work, experience the weekly checklist that is considered “supervision.” Rather than processing a situation with the social worker, the supervisor runs down a list of tasks that should be completed to make the paper file appear comprehensive to protect oneself (or the agency) from potential liability issues.

Is this what clinical social work has come to? Are we that afraid of how the media portrays us or a lawsuit that we are willing to jeopardize the clinical piece of our profession?

Are there any solutions out there for this dilemma?

-Heidi