Working with residential youth in the foster care system.

Where Do We Draw The Line?
By: David L.


What progress has been made to erase the line drawn between social worker and direct care counselor? Since the early beginnings of the formulation of the foster care system and its proactive approach to providing services for wayward children in need of family permanency in their lives, the “battleground” has evolved. That battleground is the differing motives and teaching strategies between the direct care staff and social worker. Imagine this scenario: twelve-year-old “Elijah” visits with his grandmother every other weekend. It’s Thursday afternoon and as children walk into their residences from school, which is conveniently located on the residential campus, Elijah initiates a fight with another resident. “Mr. Williams,” the direct care counselor on duty explores a variety of options with Elijah and based on previous dealings with troubled Elijah, he knows the only way to effectively diminish Elijah’s negative behaviors is to remove his name from the home pass list for tomorrow. Elijah’s reaction is swift and precise. “You ain’t my social worker! You can’t take my home pass! I’m gonna call my social worker and she will show you!” Elijah responds. Within moments, Mrs. Fields” arrives and she politely reminds the direct care staff how difficult it was to arrange ongoing weekend visits with the grandmother. Furthermore, she insists that weekend passes are considered therapeutic and should never be used as a punitive response to a child’s “acting out” behaviors. Throughout the back-and-forth squabbling, Elijah sits perched on his bunk bed – ears to the wall, listening gleefully. Not only has Elijah systematically created “verbal warfare” between two social service providers, he has managed to possibly reclaim his heralded home pass – thus the ultimate prize in this aforementioned scenario.

Anyone in the social service profession knows firsthand that a child’s main weapon in his attempts to confuse or convey a mixed message is the weapon of “splitting.” A child’s attempt to split his direct care staff from that of his social worker is only effective with the absence of communication. Used primarily as a means to an end, splitting becomes painfully advantageous when the two disciplines do not engage each other in meaningful and timely discussion. The vast majority of children placed in the foster care system are from single-family households. This statistic is of immense importance when one factors in the same lack of communication between estranged mother and father. In this example, the child in question develops the skill of dividing mother and father from an early age, thus eventually becoming a learned behavior, necessary in their emotional growth. Survival skills in the foster care system and its overall infrastructure are a necessary component for a child to retain their basic needs and wants. More importantly, it provides them with instinctive and inherent opportunities to maintain core values and beliefs to their own distinctive identity.

Equally important to the importance of communication between direct care staff and social worker is the disparity of power, or influence between the two disciplines. From one perspective, a child may subconsciously envision his direct care staff as a substitute parent due to the direct care staff’s use of discipline and privileges within the confines of the residential structure. It is a well known fact that children feel their safest when there is structure within a program. On the other hand, the child envisions his social worker as the sole entity empowered with whether or not he goes home to his family. Unfortunately, social workers are often ambivalent to what transpires within the residential program and will often, unintentionally hold fast to the family dynamics and not to the behaviors of the individual child in question. In contrast, direct care staff often focus on only the child’s behaviors and not the clinical determinants which often predispose how and why a child “acts out.” Of most importance are the varying disciplines to see their differences in their role of the child as an advantage to provide for a better-rounded approach driving their interactions with that child. Treatment teams, which promote effective communication and tolerance towards each discipline, need to be implemented on an ongoing basis. Furthermore, a well thought out plan with the child actively involved in the decision-making should be utilized whenever possible. In conclusion, a “battleground” may always be present due to varying beliefs and opinions between social service disciplines; however, it is up to us to decide how that “line” can be most effectively minimized.