Social Workers Embattled but Not Embittered

NEW YORK —  When social workers make the news, the news is usually bad.

Nine New Jersey child welfare workers fired after four badly malnourished boys are found in their adoptive home. A newly hired caseworker raped during a home visit in Ohio. A Wisconsin social worker charged with failing to report the abuse of a 16-month-old child who died.

In many states, social workers complain of excessive caseloads, low salaries and a perennial lack of appreciation for their profession.

“The good work they do is not often seen,” said Ronald Feldman, a professor of social work at Columbia University. “It’s the tragedies that get all the attention.”

Why then does a front-line social worker like Trevor John love what he calls “grunt work” -- a job that repeatedly brings him face-to-face with heartbreak, anger and cruelty?

“I’m an agent for change -- that’s the gratification I get,” said John, 31, a New York City social worker since 1997.

“I’m the one who puts the first foot into that family’s home -- we’re the first responders when something goes wrong with children. Within three or four weeks, you’re engaged with that family and you begin to see a change.”

John, who grew up in New York, works for the Administration for Children’s Services in a program that tries to help troubled families stay together, rather than remove children and place them in foster care.

“They used to call us baby snatchers,” John said. “But now we have more preventative services. I’ve gotten thank-you letters; one family sent me a photo of their child graduating from first grade.”

John majored in sociology at Syracuse University and joined the New York City agency as it was still struggling with aftershocks of one of its worst horror stories -- the 1995 beating death of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo. The city conceded that child welfare officials knew Elisa was at risk for abuse but did not adequately monitor her case.

New York City’s record has improved since then. Initiatives like John’s Family Preservation Program have boosted the morale of social workers and enabled the city to cut by almost half the number of children moved from their own families into foster care.

From a national perspective, however, social work remains an often-embattled profession. Some examples:

* Mississippi’s Department of Human Services has been pleading with legislators for more money to ease a severe shortage of social workers. In Harrison County, on the Gulf Coast, caseloads rose as high as 128 per worker -- more than six times the recommended load. About two dozen counties have had only one social worker, on call 24 hours a day.

* In Akron, Ohio, 250 social workers have been on strike since July; their union contends that caseloads are two or three times higher than the levels reported by management. A newly hired caseworker, unable to complete her safety training because of the strike, was raped in November during a home visit, allegedly by the father of a child she was monitoring.

* State social workers in New Jersey have been struggling to keep up morale in the face of repeated tragedies that have rocked the Division of Youth and Family Services. Last January, a 7-year-old boy’s battered body was found after the agency closed his case. In October, nine agency employees were fired after four malnourished teenagers -- one of them weighing only 45 pounds -- were removed from their adoptive home.

High-ranking officials cast doubts on claims by social workers that the teens’ home had been visited regularly. Said New Jersey’s now-departed Human Services Commissioner Gwendolyn Harris, “I had staff that were either incompetent, uncaring or who had falsified records.”

However, leaders of New Jersey’s social workers unions said at least some of the fired workers had little or no connection to the case and were being used as scapegoats by an agency with a long history of financial and management problems.

“It’s hard to attract people, and even harder to retain them,” said Paul Alexander, whose Communications Workers of America Local 1034 represents some New Jersey caseworkers. “If people end [up] thinking they can be prosecuted for making mistakes, I don’t know how you can attract anybody.”

Walter Kalman, head of the New Jersey chapter of the National Assn. of Social Workers, said some of the state’s problems arose from hiring caseworkers with inadequate experience or training. Pay, which starts at about $35,000 in both New Jersey and New York, is also a problem, he said.

Kalman said morale had sunk so low that some social workers were embarrassed to acknowledge working for the Division of Youth and Family Services.

“It’s pretty depressing for people in those jobs,” he said. “Every day you see someone breaking down in tears.”

But Kalman said the unions should be more willing to acknowledge that individual workers, as well as the overall system, could bear some of the blame.

“There are people who shouldn’t be in this field,” he said. “If you don’t care about what you do, you don’t belong here.”

The high-profile tragedies are triggering an overhaul of New Jersey’s entire child welfare system, and several other states are operating under court orders to do the same. One common theme is pressure to toughen the professional requirements for social workers.

“We shouldn’t perpetuate the myth that all one needs is a good heart,” said Gary Bailey of Boston, president of the National Assn. of Social Workers. “States are realizing the risk of having an uncredentialed person doing this work.”

Although states are required by law to provide certain levels of child welfare services, their “clients” are relatively poor and powerless. The result, experts say, is limited political clout for social workers.

“Child welfare is usually given a lower priority vis-a-vis sectors with higher profiles: police, fire departments, economic growth and development,” said Feldman, the Columbia professor.

“There’s no doubt in my mind we could be saving billions of dollars if we could develop preventative programs. But the problems tend to be out of sight and out of mind until disaster hits.”

In the eight years since the Elisa Izquierdo tragedy, New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services has sought to improve its performance and its social workers’ morale by emphasizing teamwork and encouraging creative, community-based approaches to problems.

“People used to be afraid to make the wrong decision,” the agency’s commissioner, William C. Bell, said.

“If they did, the caseworker and the supervisor were fired, but the system would stay the same.”

“Now,” Bell said, “if you’re doing your best, you’re going to be supported.”

Trevor John, who is working toward a masters degree with financial help from his agency, said the new approach had given him and his colleagues more confidence.

“You don’t have that sense of being thrown out to the wolves,” he said. “Now, you have six or seven collective ideas, and you feel more secure in making a decision.”

Aspects of the job remain difficult -- especially when John encounters an infant or toddler who has been beaten or sexually abused.

“You learn to cope, you learn to deal with it, but you don’t get used to it,” he said.

He was philosophical when asked if his profession was underappreciated.

“To make an impact on our country, to help shape the future, you have to work with these children and their families,” he said. “Regardless of how people feel, we’re there to help.”