It's a little awkward

...when one of your classmates is a receptionist in your therapist's office...especially when she calls you about your appointment.  He had already told me someone from my school worked in his office and asked if I was ok with that and I told him yes.  I had no idea who it was until she stopped me in the hallway today and told me not to worry...and then she calls me this afternoon!  I'm sure I made her feel uncomfortable, because when she said her name I greeted her like it was a personal phone call.  She stumbled a little and proceeded in a professional fashion...oops on my part!

I also found out today that our field supervisor is leaving; she was offered a job at our university's counseling center.  We're seeing the high turn over rate first hand!  Not sure what they will do with us, she's one of the few MSWs in Sleepy County. I'm a little anxious to see who we'll be working with now. The only two other MSWs I know of are both case managers and fairly new...so we'll see.

DFCS is taking over my life

...at least I feel like it is.

Things have been going well in Sleepy County.  From my seminar class, I've learned that our counties is one of the best in terms of internships. A lot of other people in DFCS aren't doing much or the case managers don't seem to want interns coming along.

The other girl from my class, Scarlet, and I have become pretty good friends this semester. We share a little office, so I guess we were forced to become friends!

Some highlights

- Hmong family.  Teacher reported a little boy said his dad had beat his mom with a vacuum cleaner.  The case came into Gigi (who is becoming my favorite case manager!). The family had 8 kids (5 in elementary school, 2 in middle, 1 at home) Scarlet went with Gigi to document the younger kids' interviews and I went to the middle school. 

I was very impressed by Gigi's skills. She made the kids very comfortable, chatted it up like they were old friends, and got a lot of information out with out making it seem like big scary DFCS.  We also went to their home and met the parents.  The mom had MS and it was very sad to see her suffering.  By the end of all the interviews Gigi thought the little boy had gotten some details from a movie mixed up with real life.

- I saw a grandmother give up her rights to her grandchildren in court.  She was pretty old and just felt like she couldn't handle their behaviors any more.  She was so upset and it just felt so cold in the court room. She was at one table, all by herself. 

- Sat in on the family team meeting for the 12 & 15 year old and their family who I met a few weeks ago. I had no idea these types of meetings took place. It was great to see how CM's and families work together to form a plan for their reunification.

- I copied an entire case file for a family who had moved to Virginia and their children were taken into care there. There were four full files. I'm sure I killed an entire forest yesterday!

- Went out an interviewed a family with a mother with a no contact bond. Daughter (17) was on the toilet screaming for toilet paper, mom got mad, a fight ensued. Mom hit daughter with a frying pan, then slapped the son. The daughter called 911, because she thought the cops would just tell them to get counseling. The cops arrested the mom. The daughter was distraught and felt like she had made a mistake. She said she was being really disrespectful...cursing her mom out and such. She thought the frying pan hit was an accident.

I've seen some crazy stories!

- I was able to attend the last day of a TPR hearing. There were three girls. (like 13, 15, 16 maybe) Abusive dad and mom wouldn't leave the dad. Neither parent showed up. All three girls really wanted to go home with their mom, but admitted they were scared of dad. I didn't get to hear the judges ruling, but DFCS, the GAL, and the CASA worker all recommended TPR.

I'm enjoying my time at DFCS, but I don't think I want to work for DFCS anymore.  (Does it help that all the CM's tell me not to work there?) I would still love to do work in child welfare, but not in this capacity.  I turned in my application for next year and I put the local hospital as my first choice. I've been reading about pediatric oncology social workers and thinking I might like to do that or least work in a hospital for a while.

I spoke with a professor about applying for my doctorate. I was hoping to just apply right after this, but was worried I would need experience. She confirmed that, but said she had some good resources for me. I'm meeting with her this coming week, so we shall see how it goes!

Concentration

Next year we will be at the same agency 3 days a week, all year long.

We have much more say in this process.

I honestly have NO idea where I want to be.  I did not anticipate getting DFCS this year, because I really wanted. I was sure I would end up at DFCS next year.

I'm thinking of mental health for next year?  I would love to be in an ER, but I've heard that is not possible. I need to check on that.

Any ideas for good areas?  Our applications are due in February, so soon!

Lazy Fridays

Not much was happening in the office this Friday.

I did a lot of sitting around and feeling guilty for not doing anything. I spent the first half of the morning filling out paperwork to get birth certificates and social security cards for children in care. Fun stuff right here, I tell ya!

I sat in on a meeting with Leigh, her supervisor, and a case manager with a client. The client was a woman with many mental disorders. She mentioned schizophrenia. DFCS has been involved in her family for about 6 months. This particular meeting was informing here that if she didn't take care of a few things, DFCS would be seeking a court order to have her do them.  Her children need some types of medical treatment and she had canceled all the appointments that had been set up. They told her she had until Feb. 15 to have the childrens' appointments done and they would be taking her to court.

It was a sad situation all around because she had no form of transportation and said she was about to be kicked out of her house. Her friend had agreed to let her two kids stay with her, but the client and her fiance are likely about to be homeless.  Sigh.

I then met Neville. Neville is actually an MSW student as well and in my adoption and foster care class. He is advanced standing though (he has a BSW, so we graduates with his MSW in a year) In addition to being in school full time, he works for Sleepy County DFCS. Dedication right there. He in an investigator, so he took me out to investigate.  We were going to Tia's home. Neville had been out to Tia's home quite a few times (the first time she actually told him she was the babysitter, lol) Tia and her husband had split up and the three kids lived with both of them. Someone made a report that Tia's trailer had drug needles in the sink, the kids were unsupervised, and that her daughter's teeth were rotten and falling out.

Tia greeted us and the two youngest kids were outside playing. Her daughter's teeth were definitely rotten and falling out.  The children did look dirty and unkempt. Neville asked me in the car if I thought Tia was high and I said no. I did admit that I don't know what people look/act like when they're high. Neville was trying to get the name of the dentist that Tia said had seen her children. She said she had been to the dentist and that he told her that she would just have to wait until the rotten teeth fell out. She didn't have much time to talk because she was needing to get her oldest son off the bus.

She promised Neville that she would get a ride to the DFCS office as soon as her son got off the bus. She needed to sign up for food stamps and medicaid and answer a few questions for Neville. Neville didn't think she would show up; we had a little bet. I was sure Tia was coming in.  And she did. I was able to sit in on the meeting.

I'm getting tired, I'll have to write more on my reactions and thoughts tomorrow. I think I got most of what happened down.

Emergancy placement

I think I'm going to be on my own this semester at DFCS. I do what I want!  Seriously, I just walk around and ask people if I can go with them or what they're doing or why they're doing that or can I read your case files?  Some of my classmates talked about how their whole day is planned out and it's all very structured  - not me!

I arrived this morning a little late - around 8:35.  I keep forgetting that my car is going to have an inch of ice on it in the morning and then I took a wrong turn. I don't know if I'll ever be able to put the GPS to rest.  I was so worried about being late and then neither one of my supervisors were there yet. Leigh showed up and told me Isla was home sick with her son.  She sent me to hang out with Rose.  Rose just started in November and  is very cheery and sweet. My favorite kind of person. We chatted a bit about her current case, but she admitted that her day was probably going to be pretty boring. Then Leigh came back and said that Nia was going on an immediate and I could go with her. I asked what an immediate was and quickly responded with...WELL DUH!  It means you have to immediately go to the site.

We loaded up in Nia's nice big SUV and quickly got very lost. We had an address that was something like 23C Yourstreet. Well we found 23 Yoursteet and knocked and no one answered. We asked the neighbor if he knew where this person lived. He pointed us to a house up the road, we knock and he points us to a couple of duplexes. It's amazing how people know each other!

When we pull up a police officer steps outside and tells us what is going on. Mariah, a 16 year old girl, has been arrested. Mariah is no stranger to the police and the officer tells us that he hopes she will be gone for a long time. Mariah's 2 year old son is being raised be her mother. I think Mariah was arrested for beating her mother, I'm not too clear on that though. But to get back at her mother, Mariah told the officers that she didn't want her mom to keep her son. Luckily the baby's father was involved and his mother took custody of the child for the time being. Mariah's mom was crying and you could tell she loved the little one so much.  It was a pretty short visit, Nia just copied down the paternal grandmothers information and then we left.


When late afternoon rolled around a foster care placement case manager (Lucy) called Emile and told him that I was going to need to find a placement for a sibling group who had come into custody that morning. The children had been removed from the duplex right next to Mariah's house - what a coincidence. I was freaking out at this point, because I felt like they were leaving these kids' lives in my hands and that I was not qualified to take on such a huge responsibility. But, I have to learn sometime!  I was given a list of private agencies (I had actually already tried all the foster homes in Sleepy County. [I'm going to call the county Sleepy, because I don't think much ever happens there] The little was tiny and rather pitiful. I think the oldest age on the list was about 11)

Conversations went something like this-

Hi, this is Private Agency Whatever

Hi - I'm Hazel - with Sleepy County DFCS. I'm calling about an emergency placement for a 12 year old girl and a 15 year old boy.

Oh, well they're a little too old. We might be have a home for the girl, but not the boy. I'll call you back in 30 minutes.
Well, they're great kids. They have no known behavioral issues and we really need them to stay together.  They are in court right now and we really need a placement for them for tonight.
NO BEHAVIORAL ISSUES!  Are you lying to me!?
No, I promise I'm not ;)

Well why were they taken into care?
Neglect & parents' substance abuse

Around and around.  Questions that caught me off guard:  Will the children mind being in a black foster home? (they were white) and How big is the boy? 

Eventually, I was able to find two homes for them!  YAY :)  Unfortunately, the closest (where the CM took them) was about 30 minutes away. Not only were the kids going into care, they were going to have to go to a new school in a new city.

I went out with Lucy to the home of the children. When we got there, the building manager had to let us all in. Our group consisted of Harry (the investigator), Lucy (foster care), me, and the sister of the children (age 19) and her boyfriend. The kids didn't even get to pack up their own stuff.

The house was....filthy and sad. No place I would ever want to live, but it was their home and I was sad that they had to leave it.  Since we were not the homeowners, the building manager told us we could only take clothes. The boy really wanted to take his XBOX, but we were told we wouldn't be able to take it from the house. There were no suit cases, clothes were carried out by hand and piled into Lucy's car.  After we had been there about 20 minutes, the parents arrived in the grandmother's truck.

The parents really touched me. They were incredibly sweet and worried and open and...just like anyone you might meet on the street.  The dad was worried about the placement and Lucy told him that I had found a home for the kids. He thanked me profusely and asked if there were other children in the home. I assured him that his children were the only ones there and he was thankful once again. He said he had grown up in the system and knew what could happen when you got a bunch of foster children in one home.

Hmm, I asked Emile about workers being foster parents. He seemed surprised by the question and said that he didn't think most people who worked in DFCS would want to be foster parents because they see enough at the office.

Big Mama

When I saw that we would be watching Big Mama during my first class, I immediately wondered what Big Mama's House had to do with social work.

Big Mama, Viola Dees had everything to do with social work.

Big Mama follows 18 months in the lives of Viola Dees, an African American grandmother, and Walter, her grandson, as she tries to raise him alone in South Central Los Angeles. Dees has taken care of Walter since the age of four, when his father (Viola's son) died. Walter appears in the documentary as bright and sweetly loving to his grandmother, but also profoundly troubled, affected by his mother's prenatal drug intake. In the documentary, Walter is nine, and Dees is turning 90.
Big Mama

I've never thought too much about grandparents as primary caregivers. I can't say much about the film, except that it moved me to tears. I'm beginning to learn there is no right and wrong in this field...and sometimes nothing is best. I had a feeling of hopelessness while watching the film; Walter had no where to go. His grandmother was dying, his family wasn't equipped to take him, etc. Just a stream of bads in the life of a boy so young.

I feel like the more we learn, the less answers there are. Such is life...

The Dreaded Question

After yesterday, I have decided this is one of the worst questions to ask someone - and I heard it a lot.

"Hey Hazel, would you feel comfortable __________"

What exactly am I supposed to say? Obviously it was something ridiculous, I would say no.

But in this case:

1. It is my first day. Of course I don't feel comfortable doing it. I don't feel comfortable doing anything, because I don't know how!  Because it is my first day. Because I don't know what to say to call a doctor's office and ask about a baby.
2. If I say no, what are you going to think of me.
3. There really is nothing better for me to do

The answer I gave many times yesterday - Sure, if you show me how!