Always Wondering If They Made it Out Alive
I used to work as a First Nations Support Worker in a school district in the Fraser Valley. I worked in two to three schools (depending on the month) in two communities. In this capacity, my job was to work with students of Indigenous ancestry, both academically but also with social and emotional support. This meant that I often had to help kids with their work but also just check in with them to make sure they were doing okay, advocate on their behalf to ensure that they were being treated fairly in the school environment (both with teachers and other students) and make home visits when there were concerns about their success in school, in any of the above areas.
Home visits were always mostly fun. Getting to meet and interact with the families of my students were always insightful and the relationship building was important to being able to support whomever to the best of my ability. We can’t work with our kids without caring for them.
For those that need support, whether they admit it or not, do appreciate it, even if they don’t realize it at first. As well, it is fascinating, and terrifying, to be working with a student who is moved by a social workers. For the most part, social workers are stressed and overworked and that can mean that they, in believing they are doing the right thing, actually do the opposite. As a support worker, I’ve made a breakthrough with a student one day and returned two days later (alternate days in different schools) to find the young person had been moved out of their homes to who-knows-where.
I cannot comment on reasons this might have led to an apprehension, only on where I was with an at-risk youth, ie. Building a trust relationship, working to get them feeling safe in my school environment and then, boom, they’re gone. The most frustrating is the lack of understanding from the child protection agency. With the school staff, I would often be the go-to for information on a child I was working with and when one disappears, I am often the one they turn to in order to find out what is going on. I get that social workers have confidentiality rules they have to follow (we do too) but families are not the only people affected by an apprehension or MCFD intervention. There is feelings of panic as staff worry that said student is okay, in a safe place and getting everything they need.
In addition, based on kids I worked with who came into my schools as a foster child, there was the need to start over from the beginning as anything that was done to support the child in the past, at whatever school they were in, was now shattered as they were often, literally, ripped away from their lives and thrown into a new one that they were unprepared for.
I recall a young woman I was working with being removed from one of my schools. She had been a tough case, I hadn’t quite made any breakthrough trust-wise when she was moved out of town by her social worker. There was a lot of back and forth as we tried to get information about her case to the social worker or future school workers but it was frustrating and her teachers kept asking if I knew how she was doing, they naturally worried.
I ran into her a couple months later at one of my other schools in an adjacent community. Considering how untrusting she was when I worked with her, I couldn’t believe how happy she was to see me and to talk to me and just be present. Turns out she had been moved twice since I saw her last and I was something familiar and she was so grateful for that. She had so much upheaval in her life that she was finally seeing something that had been somewhat stable and she clung to it. Unfortunately, she was moved again a couple of weeks later.
I don’t know how things turned out for her. I wonder sometimes because if you are being moved from foster home to foster home so frequently than the stability you need is not going to have time to take root and the discord you feel may be permanent and you will, providing you survive, possibly become that person that is truly abandoned in this world because the foster system did you no favours. It is crushing to wonder about these children and where they are now. Are they doing well? Are they struggling? Did they find peace? The problem is that you may forget their names, because there are a lot of young people that we as support workers or teachers work with in our careers, but you will find yourself working with another child and suddenly have a flash of a memory of so-and-so and wonder if they made it out alive, or you will see a family at the mall and a faint remembrance of another student will surface and you will be lost in thought for the rest of the day trying to determine if you did everything you could for a certain student. It never goes away.
This post has been Resteemed and Upvoted by @familyprotection
are using "Child Protection Agencies"
to take children away from loving families
and place them in foster care or group homes
or put up for adoption.
THESE FAMILIES NEED PROTECTING.
Thank-you @rvgenaille for supporting @familyprotection
You said:
and
I resteemed your story from the @familyprotection account because you have very good insight into the damage done by constantly moving foster children from home to home. Thank-you for sharing your personal experiences!!
However, what I do not share with you is your faith in the system that the Social Workers are actually trying to do the right thing. In my experiences, and from reading other's experiences, I have concluded that much of the time these Social Workers know full well the damage that they are doing and that their belief systems are actually anti-family and anti-child.
This is a part, which I as well have doubt or don't know what the social workers are thinking. Are they true believe that what they do is right, or do they know what they to is wrong ? Hard to say, but I think too that they know well the damage which the do. that why from time to time people go out of that job or system, which they worked for. They can not keep that pain longer inside to make such harm to the children and Parents.
I second your Conclusion @canadian-coconut, they know they are tearing families apart. Stress and overworked?, not at all, they are far from being stressed and overworked in the right way!, they are simply busy enriching themselves via their "choice" to remove children. @rvgenaille, I do not speak with the authority of a "second-person's" work, I have spoken with many families and hundreds of emails I and my voluntary group have received over the span of time.
In fairness I said they believe they are doing right, I don’t believe they are necessarily. I was always very unhappy to deal with social workers but I did meet some that were honestly trying to do the right thing but were often hindered by those above them and the chronic underfunding. My focus in this piece was on the child and the effect moves had on them and the others who were building trust with them.
Yes, I realize that you were talking about intent. While there are some who believe that they are doing right, I know for sure that there are some that KNOW they are doing evil and continue to do what they know is the worst thing for the family and the children.
It is a very difficult position to be in if you are actually a good person working with the MCFD, because the organization itself is full to the brim with evil people. Therefore good people can accomplish very little.
Very true.
Good story and thanks for sharing. I question if social workers want to do what is right. I believe that may are sheeple and programmed to do what is told to them. Others are massively evil. So the evil ones are programming the sheeple social worker to be evil. I also do not buy the over worked thing. I know a coupe of social workers who have plenty of time to moonlight at night in a second career. Thanks for a good article.
Yeah, and also they made the "choice" to be programmed. A choice to be "a tool for destruction". They know all these, that's why they can just decide to lie and fabricate facts "willfully".
Thanks for sharing your really powerful story. I'm very thankful that there are people like yourself that are so passionate about helping out the youth in our country that are lost and struggling, whatever reason that may be.
I've talked to my father about his experience when he was younger (albeit; he doesn't talk about it much -- it wasn't pleasant) and cycling through foster homes. He was always lashing out, and did for almost as long as I can remember, and has only relatively recently started to find some peace and stability.
It may be hard for you to remember all the names of young peoples you've interacted with and helped out, but I would hazard a guess that there are a lot of them that remember yours. Keep doing what you're doing.
Good people are routinely asked to destructive things to children they are supposed to be responsible for.
Some kids complain that they don't have any good snacks from home, and so, everyone at school is banned from bringing snacks from home. Everyone must now be equally put down.
And this was just one school, and how they handled an issue with your typical CMA approach.
So this is with almost all govern-cement agencies. Especially CPS. The worst ideas become as law.
Or you have to start believing that someone out there really hates children and wants to see them all destroyed. And they are in charge of making rules for CPS.
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