Social Workers Look for a Solution

Under fire by the county grand jury, the Board of Supervisors and the press, social workers see little hope for revamping the child protective system until the Department of Social Services adds staff and reduces their caseload, officials said Friday.

Forced to make immediate decisions in possibly life-or-death circumstances, social workers believe that the county should fill about 100 positions authorized by the state but left vacant this year in a money-saving move, said Larry Sibelman, senior field representative for the union representing the county’s child protective workers.

“They’re all cynical about (the grand jury report),” Sibelman said. “They know the (system) is running with huge caseloads and there are all these vacant positions.” Some social workers may be keeping track of 75 to 80 different cases, he said.

“I think people are looking inward, yes, as far as ‘Am I doing anything that I need to correct?’ ” added Janet Atkins, a protective service worker and union steward. “And that’s why a grand jury report is good to have.

“But is the grand jury totally accurate? No.”

After a seven-month investigation, the grand jury charged Thursday that the county’s child protective system is “out of control, with few checks and little balance.” The panel described a system that sees abuse and neglect everywhere, too often tears families apart unjustifiably and forces the accused to prove their innocence in a system heavily biased against them.

The county’s Juvenile Justice Commission has yet to release a second report that examines disputed cases handled by the Children’s Services Bureau, better known by its former name, Child Protective Services. County administrators are conducting a third probe of the department.

The Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved the concept of an ombudsman or independent review panel to handle parents’ complaints about social workers’ decisions. The supervisors are scheduled to discuss more far-reaching changes at a special session on the child protective system next month.

Agreeing that there is no money to add to the system, the grand jury recommended doing away with the agency that investigates child abuse and replacing it with a more family-oriented bureaucracy outside the Department of Social Services.

Aware that release of the grand jury’s report was imminent, Richard W. Jacobsen, director of the county’s Social Services department, gathered many of the approximately 650 child protective workers for a pep talk Monday, reminding them to trust their instincts and training in making the judgment calls that the job frequently requires.

“We don’t want a situation where they leave a child in an endangered situation” because he or she is reacting to criticism about tearing children from families prematurely, Jacobsen said.

“What we have told the employees is to step up their professionalism,” Jacobsen added. “Take one day at a time. Make their best professional judgments.”

But one DSS social worker who asked not to be identified described the atmosphere in her office as “very subdued. It’s almost like a sulking mood.”

“The line staff feels (the report) is accurate,” she said. “We haven’t seen management.”

Two parents who have complained about abuse by the system differed over whether the report vindicated them and the hundreds like them who have complained about arbitrary treatment, arrogance, delays and the system’s almost total secrecy that leaves them powerless to seek redress.

“I don’t know if I feel vindicated, but I certainly do feel that it has brought attention to a situation that needs attention,” said a North Park woman who asked for anonymity to protect her son, who was accused of molesting three children. “I don’t want it to end. I feel this is just the beginning.”

Another county resident, who has lost her daughter in a custody dispute with her ex-husband over what she said was a false molestation charge, said the report “totally” supported her complaints against the department.

But Jacobsen and social workers questioned some of the report’s conclusions. Jacobsen noted that of the 11,000 referrals received by the department each month, only 277 result in court appearances by workers to remove a child from a home.

A section of the report quoting judicial officers who claim that 20% to 60% of the children do not need to be in the system, prompted Jacobsen to ask: “Why didn’t they exercise their responsibility to terminate (the court’s) jurisdiction” over the children?

He also asked why therapists, who contended in the report that they are under pressure to go along with social workers’ conclusions or lose business with the department, aren’t “more concerned about their ethical obligations, instead of staying on the referral list.”

The grand jury’s contention that social workers frequently lie under oath is preposterous, one social worker said, because such lies would be difficult to back up without the collusion of therapists and doctors.

The bottom line, said Sibelman, the social workers’ union representative, is “if you’re going to make mistakes in this area . . . do you make mistakes on the side of saving kids’ lives, or saving some poor kid more torture, or do you make a mistake on the side of busting up a family unnecessarily?”

“The poor social worker is caught in this conundrum. They’re the ones out there trying to get the job done with too many cases,” he said.