Artist Statement

Throughout the course of this project, there have been many things I have learned. Some of these things are technical skills I have learned, mainly with how to shoot and edit video and use a blog. These skills are something I know I could possibly use in my future career as an educator. While learning these technical skills was a great experience, I also learned much foster care, CASA volunteers, case workers, and how these three entities flow together in the foster care system.

My blog project was an interesting experience from the start. I have never had a blog before and after being told in the first weeks of school how there will be a large final project and that it will be on Blogger, I was intrigued. I have seen blogs before but was kind of excited to create my own. However, I wanted to make sure that it looked well and that it was well thought out. From the first posts, I started to get a feel for the blog, starting with inputing text and basic photos. Then, I was shown the gadgets and how they can be used to provide additional information and formatting options.

My next main task was the video of my interview with a CASA volunteer. I felt this interview went well, mostly due to the preparation and research I did for the questions. While my setup for the video was very quick, I think the look of the shoot was good, with the framing focusing on Barb, the CASA volunteer. I then edited the video using Windows Movie Maker and I learned very much from this experience. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not overly difficult to use this program to edit the video, with the transitions and title cards clearly marked for my use. However, making cuts in the video was a little cumbersome, which would lead me to possibly find a better video editing software in the future. Uploading the video onto the blog was a very difficult task for me. At first, the video would not upload to Blogger and I would have to try it multiple times. Then after some time I realized about how long the wait time is and after reloading it was a success.

I had a phone interview with a case worker named Aretha. She provided me with very useful information into what social workers doe in the foster care system and how they provide many wonderful services. I used a digital recorder to document the interview. However, the audio was of poor quality and I decided not to upload it to the Blogger site. I was able to use the audio to provide quotations and paraphrases which is on the Blogger site.

These opportunities to learn these technical was a great experience. The greatest experience from this whole project was what I learned about foster care and specifically what CASA volunteers and case workers do to help out these children. Before this project, I never even knew what a CASA volunteer and with social workers, I knew of the profession, but not specifically what they do in foster care. After my interviews, I became more aware of their roles. I have discovered how the CASA volunteers are the constant in the ever changing lives of these children. When the children have different judges, different foster parents, and different case workers, the CASA volunteers provide some normalcy in their lives. The social workers provide many services that I did not know about. They have to make some tough decisions that I know I would never want to do. As Aretha said, in the interview, the social worker has many hats, including serving as a court liaison, provider of food, clothes, and other goods, and also as an emotional support for these children.

Even with all of the help that social workers provide for these foster children as case workers, there is still a sense of negativity associated with them. I think this negativity is due to several factors. One is the authority and duty of social workers to remove children from the home when necessary. This is a scary thought for parents and children, however, it is important that if the child is in danger that they be removed. Another factor is the dependability of the case worker. These case workers are not necessarily with a child from the time they are assigned a case in the Bureau of Child Welfare until they become adults. Depending on the situation (whether the child is in foster care, with their birth parents, being adopted, etc.) the case workers will change, giving the families a sense of instability. However, this change of workers is needed, because of people specializations. The last factor for this negativity is the media. The media has shown all of the negative side of social work and foster care, but none of the good. And in reality, there is more good then negative. However, to get better ratings and subscriptions, the media will put out the stories that are interesting and will get the readers hooked. This unfortunately tends to be the negative news.

This was an amazing experience and I am glad I took this class for a “simple” GER class. It was much more work then I imagined, however it was all worth it. I think that from this class, I will take a sense of pride in what our foster care system has done and what it can do with some work to fix some of its problems. I hope that in my future career as a teacher, I will be more informed because of this project and can be more involved in the lives of my students and help them as much as I can.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Phone Interview

This past Tuesday I interviewed a case worker named Aretha. She works through the Bureau of Child Welfare with children who are in foster care. She described to me about what social workers do in the foster care system.

First, Aretha described many ways that social workers participate with children in foster care, including being assigned by the courts to ongoing cases. This includes managing the case, informing all the interested parties (judges, parent's attorneys, child's guardian ad litem or public defender, etc.) of the progress of the case and of any updates to the case. Also, the case workers make decisions about whether the child is to be returned to the home. She stressed how that the goal of her and other case workers is to reunify the family whenever possible.

I asked Aretha about what are some of the daily tasks she might do and she began by saying that it changes from day to day. One day she might have to appear in court to give testimony or recommendations to the judge. Then she might have to go to school meetings with the parents and child. Sometimes when a child is being moved from one location to another, she is the one to go in and gather the child's belongings and transport them. The locations of where Aretha might have to perform all these tasks varies from within the city of Milwaukee to possibly out of state, depending on the case.

Aretha described some of the challenges that she faces in her job and the main challenge was getting the family to commit to reunification. While it is her goal to reunify the family after counseling and education about parenting, some families do not share that goal as much as her. The parents say they want to reunify, but they do not follow through on the conditions that need to be met for Aretha to recommend that the family be reunified. Therefore, Aretha has to motivate these families to see the benefits of having a unified home.

Many of these challenges are frustrating to Aretha, however she described a case that was very uplifting. In this case, a 14 year old girl became pregnant and had a child. However, with the help of Aretha and other workers in the foster care system, the "young girl will be finishing high school with very good grades and was accepted to attend a university in the Fall" of this year with her young child.

When a case worker becomes so involved with their clients, it is hard to keep a professional relationship. Aretha described how personal relationships do develop somewhat, but she tries to limit them. At times, Aretha will "take a client out for their birthday" or other small trips, but she likes to keep these interactions very general so to not develop too much of a personal relationship.

I asked Aretha about any negativity she has dealt with towards case workers and social workers during her work. She did not mention any negativity from her clients, but she mentioned that she does not involved herself in that dialogue if it comes up at her work. She thinks that if thinks about any negativity aimed at her and her coworkers that it will affect her job, so she just ignores it and works hard and to the best of her ability.

I finished the interview asking Aretha what the general population should know about Social Workers and what they do to help in the foster care system. First she said that people should know that while the media shows the negative side of social workers and foster care, social workers take their job very seriously and that they do help these children out. Second, she mentioned that people should know that social workers have to "put on many hats" in the course of their work. Lastly, she mentioned that while recently there have been reports of deaths of children in foster care in the media, these are very rare and there is a lot of good happening with the case workers in the foster care system.
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Friday, May 8, 2009

Startling facts and observations

I began to do some research about social workers over the past few weeks and I have come to some very interesting conclusions.

The first surprising thing I discovered was the negativity that comes from the press. I found two articles, the first, a WISN article describing how community groups want caseworkers replaced for the Milwaukee Bureau of Child Welfare. In the article, there is a description of a specific case where a young boy was drowned at the hands of his mother. The family was under the supervision of the Milwaukee Bureau of Child Welfare at the time.

The other article was a press release from Children's Research Center. This press release goes on to describe how the foster care system in Milwaukee is failing, where the rate of abuse and neglect is five times the national standard, caseworkers do not meet the minimum required visits and also how foster children are not regularly seeing the doctor and dentist.

Both articles were very one sided, especially with the press release. In the WISN article, most of the information and quotations came from community group called Citizens Protecting Abused Children and very little rebuttal was given by the Milwaukee Bureau of Child Welfare.

The other article has no rebuttal at all, stating all of the problems with the foster care system in Milwaukee. The only quotations and information comes from the Children's Research Center.

What really frightens me is the fact that I found this information so easily. If one were to try to take a quick look at foster care, they would find a very scary image. However, this is not the case. I know from my experiences working from Kids Matter Inc. that there is a lot of good coming from these various organizations. However, there are problems with it and things can be done to improve it.
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