Child Abuse

Child abuse and Social workers

Based on the article by Kathy A. Gambrell

The argument discussed in this article is the impact of child abuse and what social workers do to try and help. But when something bad happens the media and public are quick to blame the Social Workers.

The Social Workers, or case workers as they are more often called, are the frontline defense for children being abused in their homes. They are required by national policy to act on a complaint within 24 hours for the safety of the child.

When something happens that shouldn't, a caseworker or supervisor is always fired. There hasn't been much investigating in these problems until about 6 months ago. When in Miami Florida they lost complete track of a 5 year old girl.

There is also problems with the protection system in the Los Angeles county. Their main problem is that the staff don't have enough funding and too many people in that county to keep track of the children and their cases.

In July 2002, the state of Florida had a total of 54,330 open cases. And 33,779 had been open longer than 60 days. The spokesman for the Florida Department of Children and Family Services, Owen Roach, says some of the districts for child protection started forming special backlog units to address the issue.

Shay Bilchik, the executive director of the Child Welfare League of America, says that the nature of their jobs contribute to high vacancy rates. But its possible to keep caseworkers on the job. The main reason so many caseworkers leave their jobs is because their working conditions are terrible and cause a lot of stress. They don't get the right support or funding for adequate help. When they change their job their pay drops by 4 or 5 notches.

One of the big factors in Los Angeles that contributes to more cases is poverty. Others are things like teen pregnancy and substance abuse. The California state legislature introduced a new bill called the 20-30 to reduce caseloads in California. But the US economy screwed it over.

There is little help for the caseworkers in their caseloads. In fact