The child welfare system is a topic that can be controversial at times. Everyone has a different view and opinion on their effectiveness. For many the system is a great resource intended to help families. For others, it is a negative system set up to separate families. In this essay, I will discuss my opinion regarding the child welfare system. I have also interviewed participants in the child welfare system. I will be discussing the views of William Leigh, Dale W. Sessions, and Paige Pryor regarding the child welfare system.
William Leigh is a parental defender, he has been in this field for about 16 to 20 years. Dale W. Sessions is also a parental defender and has been in the field for over 30 years. Paige Pryor has been the Associate Region Director for the past 6 years and has been with DCFs for 20 years as a licensed clinical worker. I started the interview by asking about their views on the child welfare system and how it was working. My personal view of the child welfare system is that the system needs a lot of work and is extremely overwhelming. While there are great people who are working on cases I believe that there is a lot of room for improvement. Paige Pryor stated that “there are still areas that still need improvement. We are not a perfect system. There has been significant improvement in the system. Overall we do our best to fairly assess families and provide resources”. The side they choose has a major impact on how they view the system.
Dale W. Sessions said that the system needs tweaking “The system has lost the goal of reuniting families”. William Leigh stated, “It depends on the program some just hate parents and will do anything they can to separate parents”. When I asked if they thought society would agree with their views they reinforced the concept that it is divided. Some people believe the state should separate parents and children and others believe that children and parents should stay together no matter what. I think that Paige Pyror put it best “ I think that we are one of the most critically judged systems. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. We do too much and should remove kids or do too little and don’t remove kids, people get really judgmental. Fine line of don’t intrude on my parental rights and protect children. No matter what you do there is going to be judgment”.
I hear about a lot of cases of neglect and abuse in the child welfare system, typically they are the extreme cases that are put on TV or the news. I have built up this preconceived notion that most cases that are brought into the child welfare system have to do with physical abuse or neglect. It never occurred to me that the ongoing drug problem in Utah would be a great factor. It was alarming to hear from the attorneys and Associate Region Director that most of the cases they see are related to drugs. Paige Pyror stated that “substance abuse, neglect, go hand in hand. Meth and heroin are big”. Pyror says that there needs to be new ways of looking at substance abuse treatments but that a lot of communities haven’t embraced them. Another issue in the child welfare system that Dale W. Sessions said is that parents can’t afford the process. There are a lot of costs such as transportation, scale service fees, and it’s a time-consuming process that could cut into people’s work hours.
In an ideal world, parents would change to better the lives of their children but that is not always the case. There are cases where parents fail to keep promises regarding the changes they said they would make. William Leigh says that he sees this happen often with parents who struggle with substance abuse. The parents continue to engage in poor behavior and the caseworkers, judges, and attorneys see that. Leigh says that if the behavior is not rectified “the kids will be taken away and rights will be terminated”. Dale W. Sessions says that he also sees this happen often, “after several months or a year, they keep giving parents chance after chance. They will place children for adoption or foster care.“. Sessions sees this, especially in higher pollution densities. This leads to the question if we are expecting too much or too little from parents. In my personal opinion, we are expecting too little. When people decide to have a child they have signed up for a major commitment that can not be neglected. Raising a child goes beyond providing food and housing. Children need love, support, and encouragement to succeed. William Leigh commented that “we are expecting a non-abusive home, we aren’t expecting too little, society expects children to be taken care of”.
When children are removed from their families it can be a long-term or short-term decision. Some kids age out of the system but what resources do they have to succeed? When I asked Paige Pyror about this she said that the majority of the time the children will remain in care and may even go and look for their biological family. Resources available for 16 to 17-year-olds are independent living. There is a lot of funding that can go towards assisting kids who have aged out of the system. This funding can go towards helping with tuition, rent, and buying a car. Unfortunately many decide not to take the help from the system. These children have grown up in an environment where they feel like they have no one to trust and want to live independently. Paige Pryor said, “Statistics for their success is not very good; many end up on the streets”.
Throughout history, the child welfare system has gone through many changes and reforms. For many they might believe that the system is not improving quickly or there has not been much change. When I asked William Leigh if he thought that the child welfare system had improved he replied “it hasn’t changed a whole lot, generally parents negotiating through the system is a personal thing. Some parents are really adapting and some people are better at compliance than others. Caseworkers can be difficult to work with”. William Leigh believes that the system has made some changes and that navigating the system is dependent on the case and the people involved. His big piece of advice is to make your caseworker your best friend. The caseworker makes so many important decisions when it comes to parents and their children. In order to make the process easier for families he provides a small white binder that is full of information. This binder includes a flow chart of Utah courts, worksheets about hearings, a ‘must do’ section, and a log so parents can keep track of visits with their children. William Leigh tells families to be responsible, to take responsibility, to show up to court, and most importantly to visit their kids at least once a week.
Dale W. Sessions says that the child welfare system has gone through significant changes but that they did not stay. Sessions said that the system was “sued and some changes occurred but after a while, those changes were gone”. He says that the changes are gone because while those problems were solved new issues arose causing the system to go back to how it used to be. When families are going through the child welfare system Dale W. Sessions recommends asking questions when necessary and asking the judge for an order.
Paige Pyror says that there is a high burnout rate for DCFS Caseworkers, that there is a crisis in keeping front-line workers. Pyror states “You have to have a different personality, you have to learn not to wear your heart on your sleeve. Things you see will traumatize you”. Being a DCFS Caseworker can be emotionally draining. She has noticed that there is about a 6 month turnover. Pyror said that it is a hard job dealing with a lot of mental illness in families. According to Paige Pyror “parents that are really struggling and take it out on caseworkers ‘. Regardless it is a very important job to provide the love and support that caseworkers give. Luckily there are resources for DCFS Caseworkers when they are active in the field. There are resources like Peer Support and therapeutic support. These resources allow caseworkers to express and healthily deal with their emotions. Paige Pyror says that it is important for DCFS Caseworkers to be able to separate themselves from their job when they clock out.
There is so much unknown about families regarding the child welfare system. William Leigh wants it to be known that not every case dealing with Child Protective services is going to be a removal. Child Protective Services just have to keep their eye on you and ensure that everyone is safe. He emphasizes the importance of complying with the service plan and taking care of your children so they don’t end up in a child welfare case. My favorite piece of advice he gave was “Don’t use drugs”. A change that Leigh would like to see is having more consistency on how rules are applied in certain cases. He stated that the “Iron County assistant attorney general is hard at work with lots of termination of parental rights” while other countries are more focused on keeping families together.
Paige Pyror wants to see more understanding of childhood trauma. She says “It’s not in a child’s best interest to stay in limbo, especially during their developmental stages ‘. Pyror also believes that parents need to be held more accountable in court while keeping the child’s best interest in mind. An important truth Pyror would like everyone to know is that everyone is truly trying their best. There are limited resources when it comes to child welfare. There are going to be decisions made that not everyone will understand. She also stated that “Utah still struggles at protecting women and children from a lot of domestic violence”.
Dale W. Sessions says that the system needs to be more individualized. In his words “people are being processed like cattle. People need to be invited to be part of the solution. Once that changes and new things are implemented there will be more success. A truth that he would like people to know about Child Welfare cases is that judges and the general population need to have more information. “They have no idea how much a case can cost from doctors’ appointments, foster care placement, or high-risk placement. The general population and judges are not aware”.
In conclusion, the Child Welfare System is always going to need improvement due to the fact that the world around us is constantly changing. Everyone is going to have different opinions regarding the system and how it is functioning. I found it very interesting to hear the opinions of different professionals in the field. Hopefully overtime the child welfare system will have the resources needed to run efficiently. The main point I got from this assignment is that although this may be a flawed system there is a whole team working for the greater good.
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