It has been a very troubling few years at Vermont’s Department of Children and Families. In 2014 there was a string of child deaths in Vermont–children in families involved with DCF. These deaths prompted intense anger and at least four investigations into the department.
Then on August 7, 2015, Lara Sobel, a caseworker at DCF, was shot as she left the DCF offices in Barre, Vermont. She was shot and killed by a woman who was angry after losing custody of her daughter to DCF the month before.
The Department of Children and Families flares up in the news, then the news subsides. We hear from the governor, from the DCF commissioner, from legislators and journalists and commentators. But the people we never hear from are the people who actually do the work. And this is by design. The work that DCF caseworkers do is intensely private, and in order to protect the privacy of parents and children, caseworkers are not allowed to talk publicly about their cases. In a way, their silence shields us from some of the darkest, most complex, most intractable problems in our state.
In this show you’ll hear from three DCF caseworkers from three different areas of Vermont. For their own safety, I’ve chosen not to use their names. They talk about what it’s like to have a job where the lives of children and families are at stake.
TRANSCRIPT below thanks to Jennifer Jorgenson of UVM!
Credits and Thanks
Music for this show by Brian Clark and Peter Cressy
I would like to thank Luciana at DCF, and all the caseworkers who gave me such generous time in the making of this show.
Thanks also to Tally Abecassis, Mark Davis, Scott Carrier, Kelly Green, and Colin McCaffrey for various and sundry and important support.
TRANSCRIPT
Erica Heilman: Welcome to Rumble Strip Vermont, I’m Erica Heilman. On the afternoon of Friday, August 7th, 2015, Lara Sobel, caseworker at the Department of Children and Families was shot as she left the DCF offices in Barre, Vermont. She was shot and killed by a woman who was angry after losing custody of her daughter to DCF the month before. In the aftermath of this killing, there was a rash of truly disturbing commentary in social media [00:00:30] from people expressing sympathy with Lara’s killer, people who look on DCF case workers as home wreckers, baby snatchers. But there’s a whole different contingent that believes DCF doesn’t intervene in families enough. In 2014, there was a string of child deaths in Vermont. Children in families involved with DCF. These deaths prompted intense anger and at least four investigations into the department.
[00:01:00] DCF flares up in the news, then the news subsides. We hear from the governor, we hear from the DCF commissioner from legislators and journalists and commentators. But the people we never hear from are the people who actually do the work. And this is by design. The work that DCF case workers do is intensely private. And in order to protect the privacy of parents and children, case workers are not allowed to talk [00:01:30] publicly about their cases. And in a way, their silence shields us from some of the darkest, most complex, most intractable problems in our state. These are the problems and the stories that DCF case workers live with every day. In this show, you’ll hear from three DCF case workers from three different areas of Vermont. For their own safety, I’ve chosen not to use their names. They’ll talk about what it’s [00:02:00] like to have a job where the lives of children and families are at stake. Welcome. I figured we would start just by talking about what does DCF do? Because I don’t know that everybody knows that really what it is, and also what it isn’t.
Speaker 2: So family services, our primary role is to ensure the safety [00:02:30] and care of children in the state of Vermont. We are not baby snatchers. We are not police. Our main objective is to work with families that have children and to ensure that their children are safe and working with them, connecting them with different services within the community, and ensuring basically that [00:03:00] the care or the risk that there is for the children in the home is either eliminated or mitigated in some way. When we receive reports of abuse and neglect of children, poverty is pretty much what we see all the time, but that is not to say that child abuse and neglect doesn’t occur in middle class or upper class homes. We just don’t get that many reports from there.
Erica Heilman: Can you [00:03:30] give people a kind of a… If you can just give people a sense for what kinds of worlds you enter into in this work?
Speaker 3: Yes, I can try to answer that. So this work does bring me to all walks of Vermont and even beyond. Our district, the Hartford district is the largest of the 12 district offices. We cover the larger towns of Randolph, Bradford, and White River [00:04:00] Junction. And we also cover all of the rural towns in between that. We do home visits on back dirt roads. Sometimes they’re not even real roads. And we do these visits in the winter in our state cars, and we hope the tires are going to get us to where we need to go. And we’re usually doing these visits alone. We sometimes team if we feel there’s a safety concern, but generally if I’m doing a home visit, I go out and do these home visits alone, [00:04:30] and they can be anywhere from right here in town in White River to sometimes an hour and a half away. I have currently 25 children in custody on my caseload. I also serve, I think, about 10 additional children under conditional custody orders. So I have approximately 35 children that I am assessing safety for on sometimes a daily basis.
Speaker 2: Primarily we’re working with families that are really impoverished [00:05:00] and that there’s mental health issues and/or drug related issues. Some families are living with a known untreated sex offender, so we get calls from anybody from the next door neighbor to a doctor to teachers reporting that they have concerns about the kids or the kids have disclosed that they’ve been physically abused or sexually [00:05:30] abused. So we meet with the families and try to sort it out. So this is a mental health issue, so how can we connect a person to a local agency. If it’s a substance misuse issue, again, having them participate in a drug and alcohol assessment, developing safety plans around, “Okay, so if you lapse, then is there somebody that’s clean and sober [00:06:00] that can care for your child while you’re using? And is that person safe to be around children too?”
Erica Heilman: And how would you characterize most of your relationships with those parents? Are most positive and amicable or how would you describe them?
Speaker 2: I would say most are positive. There’s definitely tension in the relationship, because I’m pushing them to follow through with their substance [00:06:30] misuse program or trying to extract them from a relationship that’s not healthy for the children or for them. So there’s tension in those things. But I feel like I’m kind of like a coach, kind of like a life coach pointing in the direction. So there’s this road and this road and this road, and you can take any of these paths you want. You’re the one that’s in control here. [00:07:00] And it’s up to you to do this.
Speaker 4: I think one of the hardest parts about this job is that we all have our own set of values, our standards of living, and each of us is very different. And when we meet with families, it’s really important that we not put our own value judgment on these families, because we’re all different. I can’t stand dirt on the floor and all those kind of things, and when I walk into someone’s house and there’s dirt on the floor, [00:07:30] that’s my value. That’s not theirs. And that doesn’t constitute a right for DCF to come in and remove children. And I know I hear that all the time. You’re going to take my kids because I have a dirty house. We’re not the dirt police. We are there because there’s a risk to the children, either from an external source or from something that the parent has done, not based on the fact that you have dirt on your floor.
Do we get involved? Yes. If there’s something on the floor or something that the children can have access to that can cause them harm, absolutely. Dried dog feces [00:08:00] on the floor left all over with a baby crawling is not safe. We are there for imminent risk into concerns about the child’s safety and wellbeing. We are not there to criticize you because you don’t have enough money to pay for your heat.
Erica Heilman: You’ve been here long enough to see the way that people respond to the work as they come in. Looking at the social workers around you, what do you notice happen happens?
Speaker 3: I think what’s most difficult for myself and [00:08:30] for coworkers that I have seen leave, having difficult relationships with our clients is expected. Having difficult relationships with other professionals can be incredibly wearing. I do hear DCF is not doing enough. Why can’t you get involved with this child? And people don’t necessarily understand that DCF is a child protection agency, not a quality of life agency. When teachers contact me because a child has not come to school having breakfast or having [00:09:00] a jacket, those are horrible things, but that’s not necessarily a reason for DCF to become involved with them. And I think that a lot of people don’t know that.
Speaker 2: Unless there are objects in the home that are hazardous, then we have no call to pull children out of that. So the condition of the home doesn’t immediately affect the child. [00:09:30] That’s not child abuse. Does it tell you something about how the people in that home are living? Is it a picture of depression? Yeah, absolutely. There is a lot of stuff in people’s houses and it’s filthy, and sometimes a whole family is just living in one room, just mattresses and [00:10:00] beat up couches and just really chaotic and animals, and I didn’t want to sit down and there were just things crowding in, it’s just claustrophobic. It’s almost always dark. There’s always blankets across the windows. And most of the stuff is just broken down, like broken toys and [00:10:30] garbage and debris and clothing.
It is really hard to describe what you go into. I don’t know, it’s… But you don’t want to judge them for that. And we’ve been asked by state’s attorneys, “Well, take pictures.” And I just won’t, because I feel [00:11:00] like that’s such an invasion. I’m already invading and now I’m recording how they are living in their homes. Poverty is just the key issue. I don’t know who said this, but I totally agree with it. They said that poverty is the worst form of violence that there is. And I totally agree with [00:11:30] that.
Erica Heilman: So if someone is concerned about a child and makes a call to family services, DCF may or may not investigate. We don’t know. Because after that phone call, the case becomes a private matter between DCF and the family. This privacy is endlessly frustrating to the accused, to teachers, to defense attorneys and journalists, really anyone who wants to know [00:12:00] what’s going on and isn’t DCF, and it’s impossible to hold the state accountable for its handling of these cases if we can’t see them. On the other hand, this privacy protects children and can protect people who are falsely accused. And because of this privacy, we don’t really know what these case workers do. In this next segment, case workers talk about some of the problems they work with. And this is not easy to listen to, but in order to understand the nature [00:12:30] of their work, we have to hear about some of the challenging situations they face.
Speaker 3: Kids being physically abused because their parents don’t know any other way to parent them. Kids being exposed to substantiated sex offenders. Substance abuse is an epidemic in Vermont right now. That’s not a secret to anybody. How that relates to child safety is [00:13:00] parents not waking up until noon. Three year olds taking care of their six month old baby brother. Children not eating because their parents can’t get out of bed. Children not getting to school because their parents can’t get them there or can’t get them on the bus. Kids are being left outside while the parents are inside doing drugs on a winter day. Situations where children are seeing [00:13:30] their mothers being abused by their mother’s partners. Those are some of the situations that I have come across and what I am experiencing, or what I know about the family is probably the tip of the iceberg that the children are actually being exposed to. The children that I am involved with, this has been their life for years before I have become involved with them.
Speaker 4: [00:14:00] I used to have a majority of my investigations or assessments would involve sexual abuse or physical abuse. Now a majority of them involving risk of harm, because these pregnant moms who are using in utero, using while pregnant, and we’re opening assessments before the child’s birth to determine whether or not they’re safe. I mean, that’s the stuff that we here as the office is seeing right now. I mean this explosion of infants who have parents [00:14:30] who are using. The example I could think about is when I was, technically by the legal terms, assaulted by a mother. She spit in my face during a removal of her children. Got information that she was using, and we went to her house and she was completely out of it. She was slurring her words. She was not able to stand appropriately. She was argumentative, combative to the point that the police had to put her in handcuffs.
The house was an absolute disarray compared to what it used to be. [00:15:00] There was dirty diapers all over the floor. The baby was left in a crib with just a diaper on and the feces had exploded out of the diaper and they were caked onto the baby. I mean, she had runny nose that was crusty and was screaming because she was so hungry. And mom had been passed out on the couch, not able to take care of her. She had a sibling there that was trying to get her a bottle who was like three, four years old. And mom was erratic, [00:15:30] combative, aggressive, just out of control.
Speaker 2: I’ve seen bruises on children, scratches, welt marks, child pornography. Something you want to kind of just scrub your brain of once you see it. I’ve read an autopsy report on a four month old baby. You just see the fear [00:16:00] in kids’ eyes, their confusion and desperation in parents’ faces. It’s really hard work. You try not to think about it too much or to take it in too much because you couldn’t possibly do your job if you did.
Speaker 3: [00:16:30] Some families that I am currently working with I was working with six years ago, and every service under the sun has been into these homes, sometimes on numerous occasions, because more children have been born into these homes that warrant different services coming into place. And there’s not always a positive outcome. There is situations where children are remaining in homes that may not to you or I be a [00:17:00] safe or adequate home, but that’s also how this family is choosing to live, and it’s not unsafe for the child. The ideal would be to have service providers go into the home and work with these families, and they come out and everybody’s happy and everybody’s needs are getting met. But they can not always make the changes that are being recommended because there are incredibly complex issues that we’re working with, especially when children are still placed [00:17:30] at home.
That’s when the agency sits with the highest risk. And that’s when I personally feel like I sit with risk. When children are still in the home of parents that are struggling with substance abuse, unresolved mental health, yet the risk does not warrant the child coming into custody, but does warrant that I remain involved, but changes are not being made, and the family is doing the best that they can. We are going in and saying, “This is [00:18:00] what you need to do. This is what you should do. This is what your child needs you to do.” And sometimes all that mom can do is get up and make sure that her kid has a piece of toast that day.
Speaker 2: The other day I was working, and I want to be careful here that I don’t give away too much information so it can be identified. But I was working with these two other service providers, met with this mom and her infant. And we all had [00:18:30] a conversation with her concerned that I’m going to have to make that next move and write an affidavit. If she’s not following through the safety plan. She leaves the room to take a smoke break and me and these two other people are talking, and they’re a like, “God, I just don’t understand her attitude. Why is she using again? She’s only going to use again. You know that, right?”
[00:19:00] Yeah, I know that. But look at their situation. She’s in this motel room, she doesn’t have a partner. She doesn’t drive. She doesn’t even have a car. She’s thousands of dollars in debt for medical bills. Who wouldn’t use? This person, she was a foster child too. She has family, but [00:19:30] they’re involved with us as well. There is no one in her life that she can lean on. No one. She’s got a couple friends that seem to be okay, but they’re struggling too. Very similar situations. What is she going to do is going to go to CCV and ask for an application to go to school and [00:20:00] go out, get a job.
And that’s part of the problem too, is, “Okay, so where does the child go?” Oh, childcare. Well, everybody knows how expensive that is. It’s about $300 a week, with the reach up grant that they’re getting it’s around $1,000 a month. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps? How? How are you going to manage all of that? [00:20:30] You don’t. And you find yourself in a motel using. I understand it, but the child’s still at risk. So work with what we got.
Speaker 3: I talked a little about the gray areas of this work and doing home visits, usually [00:21:00] weekly, if it’s a high risk case, and leaving with the feeling that something is just not right. I don’t have facts to write an affidavit, but something doesn’t feel right. And then something happens. For example, a child went to school with bruises and had clearly been physically abused as determined by a medical professional. And I write an affidavit outlining all of my experiences with this family, [00:21:30] and I ask the judge for this child to come out of this home and to come into foster care. And that request is denied. I may have one incident where something happened that shouldn’t have, but the majority of what I’m reporting are things that don’t reach a level of removal. So not a only is this child remaining in this home, but I now have to continue to work with the family that I have just asked a judge to remove their child from their care.
What small amount of safety may [00:22:00] have been created between the relationship of social worker and parent is now completely gone. I still have to go in week after week to make sure that the child is not at imminent risk, and those are the cases that keep me up at night. Those are the cases where I feel like something bad is going to happen to this child. And then something does happen. Then the public says that DCF didn’t do enough. What the public doesn’t know [00:22:30] is that I was in that home every single week, week after week, trying to make things better, even requesting custody and having it been denied. And people say that social worker didn’t do her job, that social worker didn’t do enough, this baby got hurt because DCF didn’t do their job.
Speaker 2: You always worry. I’m not alone. We all worry. We all have bad dreams. [00:23:00] There is a tremendous amount of responsibility. And the last two years, it just made it harder. And I’m grateful to be in the current position I am. I’m helping out the Barry district office temporarily, ever since Lara was shot, killed. But honestly, I’ll be glad to be done with this work in mid-November. I’m scared to death [00:23:30] that a child’s going to die on my watch, and I really can’t prevent that. There’s so much outside of our control.
Erica Heilman: What don’t people understand about that?
Speaker 2: I think there’s a misconception that DCF family services is just… They get a report and we’re just going to waltz in and pull that child or the children right out of [00:24:00] the home. And that people think that’s what we should be doing. And that’s the last thing we need to do. We cannot possibly do that. Our resources are tapped out. We cannot do that, and it’s not the right thing to do either. It doesn’t solve the problem. Just a quick illustration. We go in and remove children because they’re unsafe, and then that family has more children. [00:24:30] We’re there in the hospital when they’re giving deliveries sometimes. We’re there a few months after they’re born. And those children come into custody and then another child’s born.
We’re not addressing the problem with the issues. We’re not working with the family as much as we need to, to really address the real causes that’s creating the instability, the safety issues in the home, in the social work, [00:25:00] school, we talked about upstream practice versus downstream. And most of our work is downstream. We’re not looking into the real causes of poverty and how that leads to mental illness or how that leads to substance misuse. And that’s what we need to do more of. And it’s not just up to DCF family services. It’s the community, everybody [00:25:30] to step up to the plate.
Erica Heilman: I spoke with eight family services case workers while I was making the show, and they all said, not surprisingly, that morale isn’t great. But what they said that did surprise me and even, admittedly, confounds me, is that they really like this job. They like working with families and they believe in what they do, but they said that they don’t have time to do good work. Their caseloads are too big, the opiate epidemic [00:26:00] in Vermont is out of control, and there’s a near Soviet amount of paperwork involved in this job. They said they don’t have to time to do social work anymore.
Speaker 4: I have workers right now, ongoing workers who have a caseload of 35 kids. How do effective case work with 35 children? You can’t. And I watch my staff fry. I watch them… And these families deserve better than that. They deserve to have a [00:26:30] social worker who has her wits about her, who has the ability and the time to spend to work with them and to engage rather than a social worker who they can’t get ahold of because she’s jumping from one fire to another. I still have kids from when I started 20 years ago coming to see me and checking in. I have those relationships because I had the time back then to create those relationships. And I just feel sad for the new workers now because they’re not having a… They’re not being able to make those connections with clients.
Speaker 2: [00:27:00] The best part of the job is meeting with families and meeting with kids. That’s the enjoyable part, at least it is for me. But it’s amazing how much of the other stuff gets in the way of really doing that face to face work. Spend a lot of time in court and just waiting. Just waiting for the hearing to start and [00:27:30] just trying to track down other service providers who can vouch that the families followed through on X, Y, or Z. Yeah, they’re going to their therapy sessions. Yeah, they got their daily dose every day this week. So children do slip through the cracks and children have died while we were intervening.
Speaker 3: Families deserve to have a social [00:28:00] worker that has face time with them on a regular basis, that they’re able to access on the phone, that they need to know what is expected of them, why we’re involved. I’ve had families come to me and say, “I don’t even know why you’re work working with me. I don’t even know why you’re involved with me.” So the families that we work with deserve to know why a state child protection agency is involved with them. And in order for them to feel respected and in order for them to feel like their cases are moving forward, they need to have contact with their social worker. And unfortunately [00:28:30] with the numbers that we have right now, that doesn’t always happen to the degree that I want it to. That’s probably the hardest thing that I sit with personally. When I leave at the end of the day, I think, “Should I have made this extra phone call? Could I have done this extra report? Could I have done this extra check-in.”
And I can speak to the difference from six years ago to now. I was able to do what I would call kitchen table social work six years ago. Sitting with families [00:29:00] at their kitchen table, really laying out, “These are the issues. This is what we got to work on. This is how we’re going to do it. Let’s pull up our sleeves. Let’s get to work. Let’s make things better. Now it’s crisis response to a situation that’s already happened because I haven’t had the time to sit with that family at their kitchen table and to talk about what the issues are. I am then responding after something has happened. So it does feel like triage work at times.
Erica Heilman: [00:29:30] In cases where a judge believes a child is at imminent risk of harm, she will order that the children be removed from the home and placed in a foster home or kinship home. For most kids in foster care, the initial goal is reunification with their parents. The social workers keep working on their case plans with the parents, and they oversee the kids who are now in foster care. But as soon as kids are removed from the home, a clock starts ticking. The parents have to prove [00:30:00] to the state that they can safely parent the children. And if they can’t do that quickly enough, the state will seek to terminate their parental rights.
Speaker 3: So the hardest decision that I have made and that I feel really any social worker can make is that decision that you are going to file, in court, a petition to terminate parental rights. I, as the social worker have made that decision with, with my management team, with our legal team, and I don’t make it alone, [00:30:30] but I am the one that sits at the round table with mom and dad and says, “This is the direction we’re going in.” And that is incredibly difficult. Sometimes it is met with an understanding that the parent says, “You’re right. I haven’t done what I need to do. I’m not surprised you’re doing this. Okay.” That is one example. Another is screaming and yelling and storming out, attacking me personally. [00:31:00] I usually have my supervisor sitting in with me to have these conversations, but working with a family for so long and then having to sit with them and sometimes saying, “You have made some amazing changes for yourself, but that does not equate to your child being able to come back into your home safely.”
And that’s probably the most difficult conversation. Parents who are making changes, parents who have gained sobriety for three months. [00:31:30] That’s incredible. Congratulations to you. But in the permanency timeline for a child, we need to be making those decisions sooner rather than later. So parents that I see starting to make changes, but just not soon enough or just not great enough, those are the difficult conversations. A parent who has completely blown off everything I’ve asked them to do, that conversation is less difficult. A parent who is showing some progress [00:32:00] but still having to make that decision in the best interest of the child. That’s a difficult conversation to have.
And I have had plenty of cases where I have had to go through a termination of parental rights trial, termination was granted, that family has had another child. For continuity of care they come back onto my case and I have to work with that family again. And [00:32:30] I’m the woman that took their first kid away. So I’m going to take their second kid away. Because we want reunification to be our primary goal, that can be very difficult, because in order for reunification to happen, there needs to be a trusting relationship between social worker and parent. They have to trust me this time around, even though I took their first kid away from them.
Speaker 2: Even in the worst cases, [00:33:00] cases where there’s just overt abuse physical, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, even in the worst cases you just don’t come away like, “Woohoo, I did my job and we won.” Lawyers feel that way. We don’t. [00:33:30] And sometimes you’re glad. “Oh, good, these children are going to be safe. They’re in a good foster home. And foster parents are going to adopt them.” And you’ve been watching them for the last year or two, just thriving and overcoming all kinds of deficits, from a child that’s three years old, it’s not speaking, or a child that’s not potty trained, [00:34:00] or a child that’s so insular, all of a sudden they’re doing so well and schools are reporting how their behavior has changed and how they’re blossoming and they’re coming into themselves. And all that, of course, feels good, and to see that and to witness that. But there’s real trauma for those kids. They’re separated from their family. I can’t even begin to think of what that might feel [00:34:30] like. That’s real trauma. That’s like death. In some ways worse than death, I think.
One case in particular there were two children involved, pretty dysfunctional family, was a case where mental instability was a major [00:35:00] issue. Really impoverished family. The children are in foster care, sibling group. And the dad was pretty much a sober person. The mom is abusing all kinds of substances, so that’s what brought them into our custody. I became their case worker. We developed a case plan and both the parents needed to do A through Z [00:35:30] of things to ensure the safety and care of their children. And they needed to demonstrate that over a period of time and show us that they could sustain that level of safety. So months go by, and in that time you’re meeting with them, you have a six month case plan review, you’re having treatment team meetings, but by the time their anniversary, in which the children come into custody.
The question comes up for the social worker, [00:36:00] what is the permanent plan for these children? Are they going to be returning home or are they going to be adopted? So with this family, nothing has changed. Things actually got worse. So the parents weren’t pulling it together. So I, through our attorneys, petitioned the court to terminate the parents’ rights to both of their children. [00:36:30] And there’s no doubt in my mind these parents don’t love their children. They absolutely love their children, but they just don’t know how to care for their children. And the parents had split up and the dad, who was sober, but had significant delays, cognitive delays, so neither one of them were addressing issues that were outlined in the case [00:37:00] plan. So I thought we had enough where both of the parental rights should have been terminated so that both of those children could be adopted.
But going through that process is excruciating because you have to testify for a lengthy period of time and justify your opinion, your recommendation for the TPR to go through. [00:37:30] Up until you file that petition for the TPR, you’re coaching that family, you’re supporting them, you want to see them succeed, you’re rooting them on. But then the federal mandate comes in that there has to be a permanency option for this child. And then all of a sudden, you flip everything on the family. And then your relationship is just distraught. [00:38:00] So you have to recount all the agencies and supports you had put in place so that they could be successful, and all of a sudden, they’re your adversaries. And I liked the father. I thought he was a good man, and he really loved his children, but I didn’t think he was competent to raise his children.
And that really hurts. That’s devastating. [00:38:30] And I remember being in that court and seeing him afterwards, and I just felt compelled, I had to say something, because I felt I really betrayed him, just like, “I’m sorry. I had to do my job.” And [00:39:00] he wouldn’t look me in the eye. He stood there for a moment and he brushed past me and I fell apart. I got back from courts and I shared my experience with my coworkers and I just started wailing. It just was [00:39:30] horrible.
Erica Heilman: Does it feel sometimes like playing God?
Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. It feels like… I don’t know the Bible well, but that parable, I think it was king David, with the two women in saying, “This is my child.” “No, it’s my child.” And he’s about to split the baby [00:40:00] in half with a sword. You feel like king David.
Speaker 3: I do this work because I see that it’s possible for people to change. And I know if I had a smaller caseload and had more [00:40:30] time to sit with my families, we could be doing better work together. I do still have the cases where real change is being made, despite not having a social worker that can be at their house every week, despite having months of wait lists for a therapist or a substance abuse counselor, they’re making changes. But the job has become in your face more dangerous. So workers have left. Social workers have left our office. [00:41:00] Social workers have left many of the offices because there’s a real fear that something dangerous could happen. I have myself received threats, and what happened to Lara is a tangible thing, and some of the people that I work with defend what happened.
Speaker 4: I had a recent incident where I had an old client who happened to be at my child’s daycare. She had been at the daycare previously, bad mouthing me, saying negative things about me. [00:41:30] And then she showed up at my child’s daycare and asked which child was mine. And there was nothing I could do. It didn’t meet stalking requirements, nothing. My kid stood up and said, “This is my mom. That’s my mom.” And there was nothing I could do. I came into this job knowing that I wanted to be a social worker, I wanted to do this work. I knew the risk that it came with this job. My child does not. So how do I keep her safe when I have clients telling me they know where I live? [00:42:00] I mean, how do we keep our family safe?
Speaker 2: When Lara was murdered, none of us expected this would ever happen to any one of us in the state of Vermont. And for me, it was like, “Wow, I can’t believe that happened, and I can’t believe that happened to Lara. That doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any [00:42:30] sense.” That seal has been broken and now it’s open for anybody. There’s different points where I thought the Berry district office is just going to just totally break down. It’s strange to work in that office and see those other social workers and just [00:43:00] look into their faces and their expressions are so unique. I don’t know how to describe them. I guess that’s what faces look like after something like that happens.
Erica Heilman: There have been [00:43:30] 125 death threats at DCF since Lara Sobel’s murder. This show is dedicated to Lara Sobel and to her colleagues at DCF. I’d like to say one last thing. There’s a silence at the heart of this show, and it’s the voices of parents involved with DCF. Over the next few months, I’ll be looking for parents who want to share their perspectives about working with [00:44:00] family services. If you have thoughts about this, you can email me at rumblestripvermont@gmail.com, or if you have thoughts about the show in general, I encourage you to make a comment on the website. The music you heard in the show is by my friends Peter Cressie and Brian Clark. I’m Erica Heilman. Thanks for listening.
Thank you . Erica.
I am a GAL (guardian ad Litem) who works with these case workers all the time. If there is a more hard working group, I don’t know it would be. Most of their critics do not understand the population with whom they work, They are poor, likely to have substance abuse problems, and in general do not match up well with most of your friends. What is needed is understanding of their position.
If you do nor like the system, stop complaining and DO something. There are needs for GALs, foster parents etc. Get involved, Do something positive. Complaining is easy, volunteering is not. Dtep-up.
Great, important work Erica. Very hard to listen to, but a necessary exposure of what the case workers are dealing with. Thanks for your piece, and thanks to the case workers who do the work every day, and esp those who were willing to speak to you. They are inspiring.
Very strong show, Erica. I live in rural upstate New York where I’d bet that the situation is very similar.
Thank you for sharing this with everyone. No one knows what they do each day and how much they do to make a difference in a childs life.
Thank you so much! As a foster/adoptive parent I appreciate the hard and difficult work these Caseworkers are doing. They truly care for these families and children. We need to focus on changing the laws in Vermont, not demonize these hard-working caseworkers.
Great show. Only one surprise for me: the situations under which these case workers do their jobs if much worse than I imagined. There is no way on earth that I could possibly begin to do their jobs. It seems to me the issues are to great as to boggle the mind and everything I thin of that might help alleviate the many problems boils down to one thing: MONEY. Is it naive of me to think that the safety of these children should be the number one priority of the State of Vermont? What could possibly be more important?
I have listened to this twice and am part way through the third but pausing to collect myself to share my feelings.
Like most vermonters I had no idea what the DCF really did beyond knowing in some gut level way that it was difficult , critically important and likely uncomfortable to be in the limelight especially since Lara Sobel died.
Almost from the start of the show I was brought to tears by the pain and suffering of the clients who face poverty, helplessness and hopelessness and the amazing efforts of the case workers as they try to help.
They like none of the rest of us, understand that many of these clients were dealt an unplayable hand at birth, many experienced simple bad luck with heath problems, educational trouble and some are reaping the hard consequences of a handful of bad choices.
None chose the situation that has overtaken their lives. The stories these case workers tell fill me with admiration for them and for the beleagured DCF as they struggle against almost impossible odds to bring clarity and help to our less fortunate neighbors. Erica and the case workers have pulled back the curtain on the sad, grim reality that we may be losing the battle. I look forward to hearing a possible follow up show as she suggests where the client population might offer insights into how the DCF can improve its efforts.
Thank you so much for this episode. It gave me a thoughtful, and intimate view into both what DCF workers are up against, and the deeper social issues at the heart of the need for their work in the first place. This is such an important story, and I so glad that Rumble Strip took it on. This is such good work!
Having worked in multiple Head Start classrooms here in Vermont, I’ve worked with many children whose families are involved with DCF. I’ve taught children involved with DCF and still with their biological families, just as I have children placed with foster families and working toward reunification. I’ve even worked with children who were taken from their families and placed with foster families over the course of the year, and as the one woman said, there is SUCH a difference. They thrive. They are able to do things they couldn’t before. But you know what? They still miss their families. Now, I am one to side with taking children away, getting them somewhere safe as fast as possible, and I have a righteous anger, even loathing, toward parents that abuse or neglect their children, even in small ways. It probably isn’t right, I should probably try to see their side-but I can’t. Even so, my heart is broken when a three-year-old girl (who is flourishing, healthy, as opposed to the gaunt and listless way she used to come in,) looks up at me and asks why she has to go to her ‘new house’ and can mommy pick her up instead today? She doesn’t understand. She can’t. She loves her mother still. There is no doubt in my mind that no matter what, there is heartbreak for all involved, especially the children.
Thank you to all the social workers that are still working for the children of Vermont-I wish I were strong enough to do what you do. I couldn’t even stay with Head Start, it was making me too sad-and the things that I saw, the bruises, the aftermath, were not even close to what people like these women see every day. To what they are responsible to prevent, even when they can’t. I am planning on becoming a foster parent when I’m financially stable, always have. It’s the only way I can help, for now-but I think that if everyone just did what they could, it would go a long way to righting this great wrong against our children.
As a late-in-life attorney (female) I went into family law because that was an area in real life that I was most familiar with. I became a Law Guardian for children in Family Court in New York State. This was a new court at the time; we dealt primarily with custody issues. Children were often brought into court by a DSS (NYState Dept. of Social Services) caseworker who needed to intervene in terrible family situations.
I interviewed children directly, and also talked with case workers who were on the scene. I needed to rely heavily on what those caseworkers told me. I always found them sensitive to the situations, insightful, and willing to go into unpleasant and dangerous places, because that was what was necessary to protect the children. God bless them!
Erica, you did a beautiful job of bringing out their stories. They are saints, and worthy of recognition. Thanks for doing this piece!
Thank you.
I am grateful to Erica and the social workers interviewed in this piece. Thank you for shedding some light on a profession and agency often maligned, disparaged, and misunderstood. I was a social worker for DCF for three years, I resigned in 2014. It was the MOST difficult job I’ve ever had. I don’t think people grasp the responsibility DCF social workers are charged with and the social disparities families face. The problems don’t lie just with individuals and families but with communities and greater society. We need to address issues on all levels.
I also worry about my former colleagues, especially those in the Barre office.
Thank you for presenting this show. I would like to let you know that this problem isn’t just yours. We here in New Zealand have a huge problem with child abuse and neglect. It would seem that underfunding is prevalent here as well as there. Pennywise is such a narrow view. Surely money spend now on bringing an end to childhood suffering would give us well balanced adults who will not end up costing the state more in keeping them in prison or treating their children for similar problems.
I look forward to hearing continuations of this as you post them.
Keep up the good work your show is most informative.
I used to be a parent who would yell and be rude to the social worker who was put into my life. I was in denial, frustrated and angry with dcf. My life was in turmoil and my kids were taking the brunt of it. I have two children, who at this time were 5 and 6 months old. We had just lost our apartment and were living in a hotel. Surrounded by drugs and drama. Neither of those things helped mine or my boyfriend’s sobriety. I felt hopeless and helpless. To top it off I had to report to someone I felt was judging me all the time. It was uncomfortable and invasive. I also had a really hard time understanding dcf’s involvement. Not because I am incompetent, but more so because I felt persecuted as a parent. I grew up in the system and resented it. I have since come to love and continue to talk to my Dcf worker even though our case has been closed. She pushed me to do better and be better even when I was so rotten to her. My story would make for a really long email, I don’t share it much but felt compelled to after I heard how much heartbreak the social workers who spoke had been through. My life is in an incredibly different place now. I believe there is hope for everyone and hopefully my story can help someone who has no hope.
Erica
Thank you for this show and thanks to the social workers who spoke. We have such a broken and underfunded system
Some of us GALs are now working to better educate our juvie judges, so that they may make better informed decisions from the bench – rather than potentially send a child back into an abusive family situation. This happens when a judge does not understand the implications for abuse, developmental trauma, drugs, neglect, etc on a child. The juvie court should be centered on the rights and best interest of the child, not the parent.
Beautiful and painful segment. And it completely jibes with my experience with DCF workers. They have been deeply caring and understanding of the families we were working with. It is very difficult work. And the case loads are unmanageable. Thank you for this story.
Thank you Erica for sharing our stories and our lives. And thank you to my colleagues for your honesty and vulnerability.
In a nutshell: “We’re not here to criticize you because you don’t have enough money to pay for your heat.”
So the reality is that the root cause of a ton of the problems that load up these caseworkers is the abject poverty of the families. And yup, dire poverty leads to mental illness, and dysfunctional behavior including taking drugs.
So, how does society deal with this? Well, in a nutshell, society – through its State Government – simply hires more older white women to be caseworkers. Take a good look at the “mourner” photo in the article. See anybody below 30? OK, below 40? Below 50? Men? Now, what does this tell you?
It would seem logical that, if the root cause is abject poverty, and the AHR is the largest consumer of budget dollars in the tax stream, then the solution is to attack poverty head-on. And you do that by creating new industrial jobs. To be specific, new industrial jobs in high-value product manufacture, specifically light manufacture. You do not need a high school diploma to do most light manufacturing; yes, the engineers are needed for product design and to sort out industrial machinery, but the actual work on the factory floor can be done by just about anybody after some hands-on training. I once took a fellow with no education who could only find harvest work picking apples, and turned him into a machine tool-setter, at a serious industrial journeyman wage. It is entirely doable.
Now, does society really want to do this? Nope. Society, specifically the State Government bureaucrats, and (some) Town Managers in Vermont (and the rest of the country) have no real interest in any of this. So far, the ONLY place in the entire USA that I have located that has a serious commitment to tackling poverty by creating new manufacturing jobs is the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And their efforts got sabotaged by a recalcitrant Gov. Walker and his right-wing stupidities.
I can create easily 25,000 serious well-paid industrial jobs in Vermont just about overnight, with a starting wage of $24/hr gross – if, and only if, the government authorities are prepared to get on board. The costs of doing that are quite minor – ranging from a net cost of $1,200/job down to zero. I started my first factory at age 23 with only a thousand dollars in capital and four years later had two plants employing 44 families and exporting to three continents (and making a pile of money). Don’t tell me it cannot be done. I’ve done it.
So the real question is: why do Vermonters not attack poverty in their midst? I identify a number of reasons, including a large dollop of very stentorian residual Protestant fundamentalism – you are poor because of your personal failures – but the thematic element is that there are those in power who benefit from the status quo. That specifically includes a ton of Vermont’s favorite people, the Lefties. Political control is a toxin.
Until you politically decide that you are going to attack poverty, and make it possible for everybody to have a job, you are going nowhere. And you will end up with wrecked families, old women working for DCF interposing themselves into those wrecked families (with zero long-term effect), and a huge tax cost for everybody. Try to let that sink in, folks.
Jan van Eck
Director
DJ Engineering
Wonderful. Heartbreaking. Terrifying. Thank you so much for sharing these stories.
There are a hundred different ways that this system doesn’t work well. There are probably a thousand solutions to some of the problems. But they all require a seismic shift in the way we view poverty, addiction, class, and justice.
Thank you, women of DCF for your compassion, tenacity, and bravery.
Thank you for this window into the darker side of poverty in Vermont. The insight, compassion, commitment, non-judgment, and eloquence of the DCF workers and the challenges they and their clients face need to be appreciated by the whole state….how I can I help get the word out? I have worked, through home health, with familiesThis is a remarkable show, Erica. Thank you again and thank you to all the DCF workers.
Thank you for this show. I’m a foster parent and, although I have some criticisms of the system, I’m so amazed and impressed by my foster son’s social worker and the other social workers I’ve met. These are people who have accepted the responsibility of doing one of the most gut-wrenching and difficult jobs out there and their reward, besides abysmal pay, is that they get to be everyone’s punching bag every time something goes wrong. As some other commenters have said, the health and safety of Vermont kids is the responsibility of every Vermont adult. But it’s not just a question of poverty per se (though it is that, too); it’s also about the profound wealth inequality that’s flourishing in this state (and nationwide, too, of course). I live in WRJ and I love our community, but I feel such a sense of cognitive dissonance every time I drive ten minutes north to Norwich and every time I think about the kids graduating from school there versus the kids graduating from school here and how different their futures might look and feel like. We can’t repair our communities and our families without somehow narrowing the opportunity discrepancy; honestly, I think that starts in the schools and equalizing educational opportunities so that it’s not just a feast of opportunities for wealthy kids and famine for the poor kids, but that’s a whole other conversation….Except that it’s not because it’s all related.
Thank you so much for your recent episode on DCF. While I’m from almost as far away in the continental US as you can get from Vermont (Washington State), this episode proved so enlightening. I’m a school social worker here, and even though I went through my Master’s in Social Work program with individuals who trained with DCFS (what we call it here) and CPS, I still don’t have much of an understanding of the system. I myself get frustrated with CPS when I feel as though they aren’t doing as much as they should for students of mine, just as was reported in your story. This gave me more insight and perhaps will lead to me having more productive relationships with the local DCFS workers here (yay!). Social work in general has a high burn out rate, but I think child protective work has some of the very highest. Thank you for sharing the stories of these social workers – they hardly ever get press that isn’t negative. I love your podcast with your knack for storytelling and such original topics!
Thanks, Carrie Hubert, School Social Worker in three small, rural school districts in Eastern Washington
A colleague recently shared your show from several months ago in which you interviewed several DCF staff. I was so moved listening to this conversation that I wanted to reach out to you and thank you. As a former director of a public child welfare system in DE, I have never seen the challenges, heart aches, and humanity of child protection so honestly and respectfully presented. You captured many of the conversations that happen millions of times each day across this country, but usually only behind the closed doors of supervisors or with loved ones at home. I have been so humbled to see people dedicate their lives to this very hard, but incredibly rewarding work.The challenges are many to be sure. Finding that line between our country’s values of family autonomy in child rearing and when intervention for protection is truly necessary is so much harder than most appreciate. Thank you for helping others get a glimpse of what it means to do this important work.
Keep up the good work. If this country had more media coverage like this, there would be more light to guide us.
Some years ago I worked for VT Weatherization, fixing or improving houses and rental units. These were all low income, shabby dwellings. One place had three little kids, a screaming mom and a smacking hand. The kids were on their own to find food of any sort. The diapers fell off one of the toddlers and there revealed cheese still wrapped in plastic in the diaper because the kid did not know to take the plastic wrap off. None of the kids talked but made baby sounds we could not understand. The mother smacked the kids and said “You knew that was coming,didn’t you?” So later I talked to the two I worked with and they agreed, ” things were not right.” I suggested we call Social Services and they wanted nothing to do with that, so I had to do it on my own in secret, so the boss would not know, as he was very much against getting involved. I hope it was a help but have no idea if it was the right thing to do, though now I feel I would still do the same.
August 31, 2016
Dear ______________,
I recently listened to an episode of Erica Heilman’s outstanding podcast, “Rumble Strip Vermont”. As you can probably guess, the episode in question was “Inside DCF”. As I listened to the episode, and your stories, I found myself deeply, deeply moved, and contacted Erica to ask if she would be willing to forward this letter to you, to thank you and provide a few words of encouragement and gratitude.
So here I am, sitting alone at my desk at home, late on a Friday night with my wife and kids in bed, trying to figure out what to write to someone I have never met and whose name I don’t even know. I’ve tried writing this letter a couple of different ways, and I keep struggling with this key issue: why, when I am trying to write a letter to you to thank you for your work, do I keep wanting to write about me? Doesn’t that turn what is meant to be a recognition of your work and effort into a symbol of selfishness? Maybe. Maybe this letter shouldn’t be a letter, maybe it should just be one paragraph, saying “Thank you. Keep up the good work. You’re making a difference and although you must often feel overwhelmed, alone and underappreciated, please know that there are people out there who believe in you and your work and we owe you a debt of profound gratitude for doing the work that most of us can’t even bear to acknowledge is necessary.”
But another part of me feels like just saying “thank you” isn’t enough. I want to explain why and how much I thank you, and why I was so moved by listening to your stories. If you are busy or tired or have kids you need to put to bed or just want to escape from work by drinking a beer on the sofa while watching TV and the thought of reading a long letter from a stranger makes your stomach queasy, then feel free to toss the rest of this overly long and self-indulgent letter. Please know that I’m not offended and my gratitude to you is no less. On the other hand, I feel like one of the amazing things about podcasts, and Erica’s “Rumble Strip Vermont” in particular, is that they connect people who live hundreds or thousands of miles apart in very different circumstances, and give them the opportunity to learn a little bit about each other. So here is a little bit about my life that led me to cry while listening to the podcast and to try to reach out to you…
I’ve had three experiences in my life doing true public interest work. In each case, I was immature at the time and my involvement was fleeting. First, in high school I worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Second, after college I briefly taught fifth grade in a public school in East New York (part of Brooklyn), the 2nd poorest district in New York City. Third, during law school I advocated for services for very young children with developmental delays. Each experience made a strong impression on me.
At the NAACP LDF, I assisted attorneys with various research tasks or helped review correspondence from inmates on death row (or their relatives). It was also an opportunity for me to learn about the history of the death penalty in the United States and my first real exposure to serious crime and poverty. Whatever your political views on the death penalty overall, it is impossible as a high school student to read stories of horrendous crimes, and of people in dire circumstances with a long history of abuse, neglect and deprivation, and not be moved by it. I was also deeply impressed by the lawyers who worked at the NAACP LDF. These were lawyers who had attended Harvard and Yale law school, who could have earned many times what they earned at the NAACP LDF by choosing to work for a prestigious law firm, but instead chose to work in a tiny, grungy, poorly lit office in New York without any support staff. Though they occasionally (but very rarely!) complained about the poor pay and conditions, it wasn’t the fact that they had foregone financial rewards that impressed me. Instead, it was the mere fact that they could continue to do that work for decades on end. Just reading about cases frequently brought me to tears, both in the office and hours later, when I was safely in my parents’ comfortable apartment in Manhattan. Moreover, the job required incredibly long hours with dim prospects for success. Many cases did not succeed. It is one thing to work long hours for low pay, as long as you get the emotional satisfaction of achieving a positive outcome for your client. It is a very different thing to do the same thing, then lose and have your client be executed. How do you live with that responsibility without going mad? How can you have a happy and fulfilling family life? How can you enjoy yourself in your “free” time? The lawyers at the NAACP LDF didn’t adapt by hardening themselves and seeking distance from their clients. Instead, they were deeply emotionally involved and committed to their clients, for whom they had been advocating for years in some cases. To this day, I don’t understand how they did it. At the end of the year, when my internship ended and I left for college, I was grateful to be relieved of the emotional stress.
Years later, after college and after teaching at a couple of universities in Germany, an odd set of circumstances led me to teach 5th grade in a Brooklyn public school. I took over a class that didn’t have a permanent teacher before I arrived. The class had had a series of temporary teachers until then. I walked into a classroom of 33 fifth graders, each with their own personality and set of unique challenges they faced. If you had told me it was possible to have a collection of students with heartbreaking stories as diverse as those of my students, I wouldn’t have believed it. Even Hollywood movies don’t try to cram as much tragedy as I saw into a single classroom. Here is a sampling of the students I taught almost 20 years ago:
• A boy who had bounced around from foster family to foster family, but who seemed to have landed with a caring foster mother together with his older brother, whom he adored. His brother was arrested for allegedly stabbing someone in a fight, and the boy in my class was both distraught at the loss of his brother, and obviously neglected as his foster mother was wholly preoccupied with trying to defend the boy’s brother and get him out of jail.
• A boy from Burlington, Vermont, whose father was never around and whose mother was addicted to heroin and unable to care for him. His elderly grandmother rode a bus from New York City, took him, and was caring for him (in hindsight, I have concerns about her authority to do what she did, but he was clearly better off for it). Her intentions were undoubtedly good and she did her best to care for him and make him feel loved despite her own limited resources, but it was clearly awkward for him to be separated from his mother and his hometown, living with an elderly relative who didn’t always understand him.
• A girl whose father had died of AIDS, whose mother was about to die of AIDS, and whose older sister had twice tried to commit suicide. When I met her, she was volatile and violent. Her moods and emotions were impossible to predict and she would erupt at the slightest provocation. Months later, she proved to be an incredibly sweet girl who was desperately seeking attention, affection and stability.
• A boy who suffered from crippling asthma (as you are probably aware, asthma is an enormous problem among poor, inner-city children, due to high levels of contamination from cockroach and rodent feces, air pollution and secondary smoke) that kept him out of school an average of 2-3 days each and every week. When he returned to class, he had trouble following the lesson (since he had missed the groundwork leading up to the lesson), got bored and acted up, leading to disciplinary problems. This was exacerbated when he was held back a year. A boy who was already taller than other children in his grade, he became a giant when held back. Whenever there was an altercation, he stood out and received a disproportionate share of the blame. Moreover, his mother reported to me that, due to his size, gangs were already actively trying to recruit him (he was only 11 years old at the time).
• Three boys who were recent immigrants from Bangladesh, spoke little English and were physically small relative to their peers. In a classroom where fights initially broke out every 5 minutes, these kids bore the brunt of it. They were at the bottom of the social ladder and easy pickings for everyone else. I literally feared for their safety.
• An intelligent, diligent, hard-working girl who always followed the rules and tried her best, but who was obviously being held back by her peers and the circumstances in the classroom.
• A big, strong boy who never looked at me, never did any homework, never answered a question, never completed a reading assignment or followed directions, and who was wholly unresponsive to all efforts to reach out to him, but who aced every test or assessment he was given with a perfect score. His parents were recently divorced, he missed his father and resented his mother, a petite woman. She told me he fell into rages at home, she couldn’t control him, and actually feared him. He desperately wanted to return to his father.
• A 10 year old homeless girl. She and her mother had moved from the area into a homeless shelter that was an hour away by subway. Because she wanted to stay in the school for the remainder of the year, she traveled an hour each way every day by herself. I was 6 feet, 2 inches and weighed about 230 pounds and I was often scared to ride the subway alone.
I could go on and on. Every student had a story that made me want to weep.
Apart from the personal challenges the students faced, there were the physical limitations of the school itself. My 33 students were crammed into a classroom designed for 24 students. The heat in winter was inadequate and would be shut off on weekends, so it wasn’t until Tuesdays that the classroom was warm enough for students to take their jackets off. Mondays were a horror: my students would leave their puffy winter jackets on all day, frost forming on their breath when they exhaled. In an overcrowded classroom, any movement would result in one student’s jacket brushing against another student, which immediately led to a fistfight. I would spend all day hurdling desks and trying to break up fights. Teaching was almost impossible. If anything, it was worse in the summer: no fan, no air-conditioning and no windows that could be opened when summer temperatures hit 96 degrees with high humidity. I bought a fan and brought it into the classroom, but the fights over who could sit closest to the fan were so bad that I hid the fan in the closet, told the students it was broken, and never used it again.
The school was so overcrowded, they brought in modified shipping containers to use as temporary classrooms and put them the only place they could: on the playground. This, of course, meant there was less room to play, so only half the students could go out at recess each day after lunch. The other half would spend their lunch break building up resentment that would explode as soon as they returned to the classroom.
My classroom had a small library of books that the students were supposed to borrow and read. It was obviously a random collection of books that was thrown together to give the appearance of well-stocked shelves, without any effort to ensure the books were grade-appropriate. In a 5th grade classroom where hardly anyone was reading at grade level, we had an 800 page history of Rome and a 500+ page biography of Nixon.
What about the teachers and administrators? They must have been awful, too, right? All just lazily punching the clock until they could put in for early retirement, right? Nope, just the opposite. These were all people who held masters’ degrees and who could have earned tens of thousands of dollars more teaching a few miles away on Long Island in comparatively affluent communities. Yet they chose to stay at this budget-strapped public school in East New York teaching over-crowded classes with students who had every emotional problem under the sun. Why? Because they genuinely loved teaching, loved the students, and felt they were making a difference. Again, I couldn’t imagine how they made a career out of it. Even putting the poor pay aside, I found the job emotionally and physically draining. I was so exhausted there were days where I could barely make it home and was tempted to just sleep in my classroom after preparing for the next day. Emotionally it was no better. After the last bell rang, I would head straight to the office of the student counselor. After a long day of dealing with the emotional problems of at-risk students, she then had to deal with me walking into her office bawling, an act I would often repeat at night in my bedroom when the day’s events and my students’ stories would catch up to me. My only therapy was lingering in the doorways of teachers who taught extracurricular classes after school. There the children were transformed. Relieved of the stresses of regular class, they would draw or sing or play and finally looked like children again, not balls of fear, anger, frustration, stress and sadness.
Through it all, I had to listen to the endless rhetoric of politicians and the public blaming teachers and schools for failing to solve society’s ills. As one teacher put it: “They are in our classrooms for about 6 hours a day. The other 18 hours a day we have no control over.” You can’t expect schools to solve poverty, drugs, health problems, marital problems, abuse, homelessness and racial tensions. As school budgets keep getting cut because nobody wants to pay property taxes, we expect more and more of our schools and teachers, while consistently portraying them as the bad guys. I left and wound up going to law school, but teaching was the hardest job I’ve ever had, and I have tremendous respect for the teachers who have devoted their lives to helping these kids and passed on easier and more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.
While in law school I did some volunteer work for an organization that would advocate for public services (mostly various forms of therapy) for children with developmental delays. All of the children came from extremely poor households, and most were the children of parents who were mentally ill, themselves had mental development issues or abused drugs. In many cases, it was apparent that the parents were barely able to take care of themselves, let alone provide a stimulating environment for their children. And I was shocked at the delays some of the children exhibited even at an extremely young age. Verbal skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills…these kids were so young and already so far behind. I couldn’t tell whether their delays were due to undiagnosed physical problems inherited from their parents, prenatal drug exposure or due to the negative effects of neglect and their environment. But I was frustrated at how difficult it was to provide help, and at the level of help we could facilitate, even if we were successful. It was difficult to reach parents, difficult to arrange meetings (which were often missed after I had spent a lot of time traveling – unsurprising given that some parents had trouble telling what day and time it was, let alone making and keeping plans to meet on a specific day and time in the future), difficult to reach aid organizations and city officials, and difficult to procure services even where it was clear the children needed them. I didn’t blame anyone, because I generally think everyone was doing what they could. Many of the parents were handicapped to a degree that they had difficulty understanding what we were trying to achieve, and it would have been unrealistic to expect them to attend appointments on time or suddenly start reading fairy tales to their children every night. And the aid organizations and city officials clearly had too much work, not enough time and an almost non-existent budget that was obviously incapable of meeting even a fraction of the demand for these services. A part of me started to despair and wonder: is it worth it? What’s the point? Even if we received approval for a child to receive services, I had trouble believing that the parents would be able to ensure that the children actually received the services regularly, and I had trouble believing that an hour a week was ever going to be sufficient to overcome the massive delays and environmental hurdles these children faced. Even with years of therapy, I’m inclined to believe that many of my child clients would never be able to obtain a job or really care for themselves.
So what’s the point of these stories? Why do I bother telling you this? It’s because – even if only briefly, even if only indirectly and even if only on a smaller scale – I at least understand some of the issues that you face and overcome to keep doing your job. The low pay, the long hours, the physical exhaustion (especially if you also have a family), the toll on your emotional well-being and personal relationships, the public criticism from those who speak without any true knowledge or sense of compassion and decency, and the occasional bouts of despair and doubt. Seeing children and families in distress is one of the hardest things I have ever done, and for the most part I wasn’t even directly exposed to it. I’m sure you have seen things 100 times worse than I ever experienced or could imagine. Moreover, you are able to do it for far longer than I ever could. My experiences above never lasted more than a year. I couldn’t bear facing these issues for any longer and honestly don’t understand how you are able to do it – you must have deep emotional reserves, a profoundly strong sense of self and a drive to serve and help others that I can only imagine. You do what I could not, and you give of yourself in thankless anonymity. Serving and protecting children and families…it is hard for me to imagine anything more important, or more noble. The successes are incredibly uplifting, but failures can be crushing, with a sense of guilt that is hard to shake or reason away. So after all of that, I come back to the short statement I provided at the beginning, but which I hope rings truer and more sincere in context:
“Thank you. Keep up the good work. You’re making a difference and although you must often feel overwhelmed, alone and underappreciated, please know that there are people out there who believe in you and your work and we owe you a debt of profound gratitude for doing the work that most of us can’t even bear to acknowledge is necessary.”
Wishing you all the best from the very bottom of my heart,
Adam
I work with DCF caseworkers all the time. I recently saw three of them leave because of the pressures of the job. There may be a group that is more underappreciated than this, but I can’t imagine who they are.