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.

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.

Interview Video

Here is the final edit of my interview with Barb Olson, one of the CASA volunteers. I thought about just leaving this video unedited and then combining it with whatever footage I would get later, but I thought this would be good practice in editing. I am still working on setting up an interview with a case worker. Hopefully that will get figured out soon so I can complete my project.

Part I

Part II

Back in business

After much trouble with my computer and trying to access Blogger from it... I have succeeded! For my project I have contacted Megan at Kid's Matter Inc. and have been working out a time to interview a case worker. Due to their schedules it is going to be difficult. However, I think it's important to show the hard work that these case workers have to do and help dismiss some of the negative stereotypes about them. I extracted the footage with the Barb, the CASA worker and have begun editing it. I have been thinking about some ways to incorporate that footage with footage of an interview with a case worker. So, for next week, I hopefully will have an interview set up, and I might take some more still pictures if I have some time.

Kids Matter pictures

More pictures of Kids Matter Inc.:

Kids Matter visit

I visited Kids Matter Inc. for the first time over my spring break. There I interviewed one of the CASA volunteers and talked with her about her experiences with the case she had been previously assigned to.