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since 12/15/98 |
| Columns::December 1, 2003 University hosts first ‘urban congress’ for medium metro cities Macon, former U. of Northern Colorado administrator, is named registrar at UGA ‘Chick’ chat time Writing assessment a requirement of freshman applicants for 2006 Adams elected chairman of NASULGC council Florence Winship, longtime health center physician, dies Three win staff awards in forest resources The naked truth: ‘Genetic switch’ controls differentiation in immune system cells Prof studies how plants can help tolerate environmental damage Peace Corps opens its only office in Georgia on UGA campus Kudos The third degree Campus News Professional standards Social work faculty discuss prospects for improving child welfare system Social work faculty members Alberta Ellett and June Hopps organized a national conference at UGA this fall entitled “Developing Strategies to Professionalize Child Welfare in America.” Columns talked to them about the conference goals.
Columns: What was the purpose of the conference? Ellett: It focused on professional education, hoping to influence public child welfare--child abuse and neglect, foster care and adoption--which used to be professionalized. Columns: I was surprised to learn that child welfare workers don’t have a social work degree. Hopps: It was not until the late ’60s or early ’70s when we moved away from a professionalized system. We ended up with a child welfare system, across the country, where the employees do not have the educational preparation, the life experience, or the professional exposure that it takes to make life-altering decisions. When you move a child from a home, when you take a child from a family, when you split siblings up, or when you make the decision that the children don’t need to be moved away from that home--those are critical decisions. Columns: Why was that kind of licensing requirement dropped? Ellett: When we got state mandatory reporting laws--for professionals to report suspected abuse and neglect--the number of cases exploded. Then in 1974 we got federal legislation, the Child Abuse Protection Entreatment Act. And there weren’t enough social workers to fill the necessary positions to deal with those cases, and so the expeditious thing for administrators was to minimize or eliminate the social work requirement. Hopps: When these decisions were made, we did not have the severe kinds of cases as we do now. Our clients are struggling with drugs, in the community as well as in the home and the family. They’re struggling often with unemployment and unemployability. They’re struggling also with mental health problems. So the cases are a lot more complex. Ellett: The other thing is that single-parent families have increased dramatically. When I started out in 1970, there were mostly two-parent families. And now nearly all of the families that come to DFACS attention or child-welfare attention around the country are single parents. So the children have lost half of their support, not only financial but emotional. You also lose the other half of the extended family, which often stepped in. Columns: So the conference aims to retrieve that professional status. Hopps: And to get it back on the national agenda. Child welfare programs all around the country have never been adequately funded. Before we can professionalize the system, we have to recognize that it will cost dollars. Ellett: They’re not permitted to have cell phones. They’re given radios, and often those radios don’t work. When they’re out making home visits in remote areas or in dangerous neighborhoods, they’re on their own. Hopps: We’ve got to make it a professional environment. One that says that we care. The system--and the system means the public--has to care about these children, not just the employees. The employees do a decent job, if you look at the whole picture, given what they have to work with. Ellett: We just finished a statewide study--surveys and focus group interviews with DFACS employees. The focus was to identify factors that contribute to employee retention. The national average of employee turnover in the public sector is 20 percent. In this state, in 2000, it was 44 percent. We have new people coming in all of the time. The clients can’t develop a trusting relationship because the case workers are here today and gone tomorrow. There’s no continuity in the service delivery that clients need in order to keep their children with them in their homes, or to get their children back out of foster care. Hopps: In some counties there was 100 percent turnover. Ellett: The bottom line was that they’re overworked. They’re putting in 50 or 60 hours a week, and there is no overtime pay. More than 80 percent of the employees have caseloads that are above the Child Welfare League of America standard. Hopps: When you think about what it means to be a professional, one cornerstone is autonomy. We educate social workers here in our school for autonomous practice. But many of the workers are not prepared, and the system does not differentiate. Columns: Are you aiming for some kind of federal program of licensing, or are you focusing on states? Ellett: We kicked around all of those ideas. We want to professionalize child welfare nationwide, and trying to accomplish that one state at a time feels like it will not happen in my lifetime. Hopps: We believe that the public will have much greater confidence in credentialed public workers. In this state, 10 percent of the people in child protective services have only a high school diploma or a G.E.D. There’s absolutely no reason for that. Ellett: And what’s never been addressed in federal legislation are the minimum qualifications of who does the work. The system can only be as good as the professional preparation of the staff doing the work. |
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