Children In The United States: Case Study

On September 21, 2015, I met with Ms. Katie, a student in the MSW program at NCSU, to conduct an interview. We met at Starbucks in Cary, in the crossroads shopping center. Ms. Katie’s responses helped me learn and think about social workers in the child welfare social field. As a prospective social worker, my questions were formed based thoughts that I was concerned about my responsibilities in the social work field..

A child may start school who is already involved with a social worker due to external factors affecting the child’s development. The school may also contact a social worker if they become concerned about a child and their home environment. Social workers can provide advice to the school about the child’s background in order for the school to understand what support should be given.

The job of a child welfare worker appears to be a demanding profession that promotes the child’s safety, but also strengthens the family organization around them in order to successfully raise the children. This child welfare workers work in the system known as the Child Protective Services whose initiative is to protect the overall welfare of the child. The short novel From the Eye of the Storm: the Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker by Cynthia Crosson-Tower demonstrates the skills necessary to deal with the practice of social work along with both its challenges and its happy moments. The novel consists of some of the cases involving Tower’s actual career in social work. In reading the book, I was able to experience some of the actual

Children are being uprooted form their lives and placed in a home they are not accustomed too. This experience can become even more traumatic when they are placed in homes and shelters with limited or inadequate living conditions. Of the five-billion dollars federally allocated to annually fund the child foster care, 75% of that is spent in the child welfare systems. This exhibits even more atrocities of neglect and abuse from the system designed to protect children. (Hagopian 6) This money is being wasted on frivolous things such as pay-raises for social workers instead of providing a suitable living environment for the children’s prosperity. This money will be better spent on providing food, clothing, or even in scholarships for children who want to go to college. Also, while a child is in the system their emotional, medical, dental, and educational need are required to be taken care of (AdoptUSKids 2).

Children and families are the foundation of our society and our future. I understand family social work as both tertiary intervention and primary prevention. Issues such as unemployment, abuse, neglect, and lack of housing can put undue stress on family systems. By addressing and helping to alleviate these issues as a tertiary intervention a family can have increased stability in its home life. This strengthened environment can be a primary preventative measure for the children in the home. It can lead to lower levels of incarceration, higher education rates, higher employment

At age 18 legally in the United States a child transitions from the stage of

Social workers must be cognizant of the various risk factors that potentially affect the adolescence developmental stage. Therefore, it is important that social workers are aware of school practices that incite the devastating process of school-to-prison pipeline which push students particularly students of color and students with disabilities out of the classrooms into the juvenile criminal justice system. Moreover, social workers must understand the risk factors that affect quality education and equality. Therefore, Social workers must continue to work towards changing adverse school policies through, advocacy, legislation reform, and societal awareness.

The social worker communicates effectively with the parents when issues are brought up in order to resolve them in a timely manner. The children miss school frequently if social workers do not make weekly visits to the homes due to the high poverty and amount of children per family students are persuaded by their parents to work within the garbage dump alongside them.

CHILDREN AT RISK is a non-profit organization that drives change for children through research, education, and influencing public policy. Founded in 1989 in Houston, Texas, the organization focuses on the well-being of children and educates legislators on the importance of key children’s issues. While focusing on a variety of issues, the primary issues are human trafficking, food insecurity, education, and parenting. CHILDREN AT RISK also has a North Texas office in Dallas. Some of CHILDREN AT RISK's previous primary issues were juvenile justice, mental health, and Latino children.

As a Social Worker, I have had the opportunity to work with children and families from diverse socioeconomic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. My experience and training includes extensive work with prenatal, infant and early childhood education and development. Through this course I have been able to

Maurice William’s understands that social workers get tired because of their relentless job responsibilities, therefore, she makes sure they don’t experience burn out since it is her responsibility to keep the families intact (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011). Since she is not out in the field visiting the homes, she puts her faith in her upper management team to be able to listen and pay attention to any problems or potential future problems (Laureate Education, Inc. 2011). Since she is unable to be out in the field, Williams uses her supervisory skills to train her staff to be able to identify potential problems and also to report back to her what the problems are. If there were problems out in the field (i.e., foster parents, foster children), she shoulders the full responsibility to make sure that the problems are addressed and resolved, or modify changes that are in the best interest of the children.

Subject child was interviewed at the Bronx CAC due to sexual abuse concerns depicted in Case ID 26651512 which was enhanced to an IRT (IRTA# 64678) on 3/23/17. Subject children were seen again at the Bronx CAC on 4/7/17 where CPS, Chantel Plummer, documented, “The children were assessed to be well with no visible marks/bruises.” If it is determined that the subject child has an STD, IRTC or an IRTC at ECS (after hours) should be contact immediately for a case reassessment.

What about the kids that are not considered “at-risk”, but are not resilient? The kids that have strong community, social, and environmental support. What factors play into this compared to an at-rsk kid that is resilient? what if any cultural factors play into this equation? Does the role of the parents decrease a child’s ability to build resiliency of a child that is not at-risk, and if so how? Does a child that faces little hardships in life cause them to become less resilient compared to at-risk kids because they rarely had exercised this

Seattle Children’s still has a winter volume and they are very busy at ED. The census is high.

Missed karate all week June 11-16 and for this week 19-23 and Since I’ve not been home for the past 2-3 moths they have missed most days. They usually have to be there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. 5:30-6:30 or 6:30-7:30