Either way, the front line workers are going to take the fall. I've been reading this blog because I work in the child welfare field, I lived and worked in DC, and because I came too close to becoming one of the policy and planning specialists for DC CFSA. It's a bit scary for anyone to be working in the child welfare field, especially when administrators and politicians, even the general public, have no clue about what's really happening. Policies are created that make no sense at all. When something goes wrong, the higher ups try to make it go away by firing the ones who face the daily ethical dilemma of making the "best" possible decisions from a crappy pile of less than ideal options.
This saddens me because of the number of good individuals out there who leave the field out of fear, anger, hopelessness, (not to mention embarrassingly low wages.) Yes, we each make the choice to work in this field, but I really would like to see the average citizen, along with these higher ups, spend one day exposed to the incredibly sad, disturbing, crazy nightmares that are some children's lives, AND try to figure out a way to help them and their families with extremely limited resources and do so within the confines of our legal system. Maybe then they'd have a broader perspective and not be so trigger happy.
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