My only answer to you, and please know it is with utmost respect to all families like yourself that have gone through this- follow a social worker around for one month. You will see and hear things you can't even imagine happening to children. They have to go to schools and talk with teachers and principals, confer with LE, go to the person's home who is accused of abuse and assess the situation. Thanks to laws and lawyers that promote them, a social worker cannot just show up when a call is made- they have to give the parent(s) a notice. Then they have to document everything, lots and lots of paperwork.
They also visit children in the hospitals, taking statements of what occurred to them from the children, doctor's and nurses.
Many social workers are lucky if they get lunch on the run- most have to pack and eat in their cars on the way to the next case.
Social workers have to be present at every court hearing- do you know how many of those they attend per year?
Social workers miss family dinners, get called out on holidays. It is an endless job, it isn't like many of us who leave our work at the end of the day, come home and eat, spend time with our family, watch TV shows or sports. MANY social workers do work after hours on their OWN dimes. They love and care about children. Believe me, it hurts them when you have a precious child like Lucas and your niece, they want to take them away, but their hands are ties because of laws. Laws!
I have seen quite a few tears shed over the years by beautiful and caring social workers, who berate themselves when the court system failed the child. As I have said before, they have to follow a protocol and the criteria has to be met before they can take action.
The hours are endless, the pay is just awful. There are so many cases, not enough social workers or time in the day for them to complete their assessments.
Let's also get into foster homes- there are some emergency foster homes set up for temporary stays, but then, the social worker has to find a permanent situation, which is not easy. One time, the court was actually trying to protect a teen from abusive parents- every time they tracked where their child was, LE and the social worker had to drop what they were doing, arrest the parents, grab the child, and get them to another safe emergency location and find another safe place across the state- yes, that far away, in this particular case. This happened several times, some in the middle of the night! She had to get out of bed, and mind you, she wasn't feeling well herself and was very run down, but she threw on her clothes, left a note for her family (no cell phones or internet back then), and off she went, driving an hour away from her house, collecting the child's things while LE and the foster parents tried to calm the frightened child down, drove another hour and plus minutes to another emergency foster home, found a new place a few days later, gathered the child, went to court on the behalf of the child, transferred the child's school records (did you know social workers do this?), and try to get the child established in their new envirnment
Then you have times when the foster parents and the child don't mix personality wise- not too often, but there are times the child tries to run away from their foster parents, and guess who has to go and try to look for them and find them a temporary place to stay, then a more suitable foster home.
I think you all get my drift on the day of a social worker, but please know, I am sympathetic on both sides here, both to the victims and their families, and to the wonderful social workers who put more hours in one or two days a week than some of us do in 7 days.
My heart goes out to all the victims and their families, as well as the social workers who work long hours with no thanks but non stop criticism, when the courts and lawyers fail to protect the children.
