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Mikayla Nichols
Joan Snyder
English 102
Lesson 11
4/12/13
Significance of Child Abuse Regulations: Rough Draft
In America there are nearly 20 million reports per year of abuse or neglect given to the Child Protection Services, according to the "We Can Do Better" book. In this decade, imagine how many of those cases are not properly handled due to the lack of discipline within the Child Protective Services regulations. Among the lack of discipline there consists a larger issue underlying with the social workers and the amount of work given to them. It is easily seen that our nation's children are neglected due to the faults within the governmental systems. Child Protective Services should increase discipline over case regulations and standards due to high workloads, neglected children, and an increase in child fatalities.
The Child Protective Services system has acquired increasing workloads for social workers. The amount of cases given to a single social worker has extended past what regulations suggest which hinders the optimal stability for social workers. According to Adam Rodewald at the Appleton Post-Crescent, hundreds of social workers are falling behind on cases and not being able to keep balance. "...national standards recommend 12 or fewer cases per worker." (We Can Do Better) The quotes from Appleton Post-Crescent and the "We Can Do Better" article combine the viewpoints of the firm who see the social workers as being capable of many tasks, and from the viewpoint of the workers themselves whom are struggling to not neglect a child, but have no control over how much work they receive. The cause of so many cases going to one worker is the rapidly increasing number of abuse cases being submitted to CPS. As stated before from the "We Can Do Better" book, there are nearly 20 million reports given to CPS, and that causes a backload of work for the social workers. This load on their shoulders may lead to more neglect and abuse of children to whom are just a pile in a stack of papers. "With eight to 10 new investigations added each month, Axt has found herself giving up evenings and weekends with her own children out of fear for the safety of others." Rodewald once again has a viewpoint unlike another in telling the story of Axt who gives her own time to save the lives of other children. Rodewald shows the many thing social workers do to try to not neglect the children, and in doing so, it is helping no one. The social workers constantly get more work, and they are missing their own families, children, and special moments, so they can work incredibly hard on a stack of papers that seem to never decrease,The increase of abuse cases is shown within the statistics of 20 million reported and through the story of one social worker who gets such an increase on workloads that it is now affecting them personally. The amount of cases being sent to one place is caused by a lack of funding. "We've not received additional state support; of course, despite the fact our caseloads have increased 30 percent this year..." (Rodewald) Adam Rodewald of the Appleton Post-Crescent has discovered that millions of dollars have been cut from spending in child abuse cases throughout all counties. This direct quote statistically shows the amount of work that the workloads are too much to directly help the children. If anything, the children are simply suffering more due to the government.
Due to a workload nearly impossible to fulfill, many children are being neglected. Many social workers are overloaded with guidelines that they neglect some very important children. "Today, social workers must follow a 72-page booklet of standards when investigating child abuse or neglect." (Rodewald) According to "A Coordinated Response to Child Abuse and Neglect: The Foundation for Practice" not only do the social workers have a book of standards, they also have a flow chart of procedures that they must follow perfectly which inhibits them from seeing important cases. The quote used above shows a specific fact in which appeals to your emotions because the social workers are overworked, tying into an overall picture of CPS. The second supporting detail will help people realize the need for more social workers and to spread the word to stop abuse. As I read on, I see that the rules for social workers are much more difficult than need be. The standards to help the children are overwhelming and put too much pressure on the social workers to do a good job, though they need to be focused on how fast they work as well. This time and rules conflict leads to files that are not being seen.
Due to the strict standards, CPS must backlog cases while others are processed. In one city there was a backlog of 1,053 cases, according to Rodewald. Rodewald, says that when backlogged, the cases are waiting to be closed, which can lead to deaths of many children. The cases backlog for sixty days for reasons that could easily be moved faster, such as police reports and medical files. The facts from Rodewald complete the importance of how many kids are being mistreated because backlogging just prolongs certain children from help, while uncooperative adults take their time.
Multiple cases get mistreated due to more than standards, but lack of training. Often, CPS employees are being hired without training or experience. According to "Child Welfare Trends in Arizona" there are 856 filled spots in CPS that have no training and only 214 employees in training. This would imply that millions of kids are receiving help by someone who knows nothing more than their neighbor. This may lead to opinion based decisions and a lack of standaeds. If you are not trained, you have no goals to reach, showing that the social workers just work with no discipline in place to make sure they do their job thoroughly. The facts show that people are not getting trained and that the numbers should not be almost in the thousands for those with no training but acquired a job.
The amount of cases neglected unfortunately leads to an increasing number of child fatalities. The number of fatalities is incredibly high and inexcusable. For a child to die due to an adults actions and lack of discipline is appalling and unnecessary. The cases in which child abuse leads to death due to the social workers in incredibly avoidably through training and such. ."Between 2001-2008, the official number of child abuse and neglect fatalities was 12,180" (We Can Do Better) A team manager quotes in "We Can Do Better" about how flabbergasted one should be at the statistics due to the fact that these deaths were completely preventable. This approaches both the statistic and the opinon on how inexcusable the deaths are by finding an agreement with that.
One part of high fatalities is the amount of social workers whom opinions are lax. The article "A Coordinated Response to Child Abuse and Neglect: The Foundation for Practice" shows how the opinions of social workers come in to play more than procedures do on when a child is actually being abused or not. Once again Rodewald has the perfect statistic in saying five percent of the workers who take the child abuse or neglect cases don't even finish the case. They start the investigation and either stop investigating or they completely forget the paperwork. The paperwork is important to show that the child does not need to be in that family. Perhaps a social worker forgets their work and a child goes back to a family it should not have? That would have been completely avoided had the social worker finished their work. The first source shows the specific procedure being used, and how the social workers ask questions and based upon opinion concludes what to do. The other source gives a specific fact upon how the social workers are using their own thought on how fast to investigate which leads to death.
As I have mentioned before, when opinions are used some parents may get their child back when they don't deserve to. "A Coordinated Response to Child Abuse and Neglect: The Foundation for Practice" shows within the procedure that they only assess one child within the family, which may lead to the others dying. These siblings may die for many reasons, but the largest reason is the fact that CPS has left them behind. The parent will no longer have the one child to abuse, so as common sense suggests, they will run to the next child. This is a result of anger. When the parent is caught, they will look towards the first person who would have known to tell and they will take out their violence upon them. Some parents even get so violent that they kill due to anger. The story of Jhessye Shockley in Glendale is another story to which shows that a parent who gains custody of their children more than once can lead to a tragic fatality. When the little girl Jhessye was first found missing, the cops ran to everyone but the mother who noticed her gone. This raised regulation questions once again since the mother had multiple accounts of abuse, but she still had all of her children, beating them continually. At a certain point she was pregnant and had Jhessye only to lock her up inside of closets, barely fed her and physically hurt her. She used to take wires to beat her children, along with other medival ways of punishment in which are highly illegal. Yet, through all of this, the police never suspected her to be the cause of Jhessye being missing. Months later, they find that the mother killed her child and dumped her away. Still to this day the body has yet to be found in the dump or any surrounding area of the house. This easily may have been preventable if the police or CPS had more discipline in standards or any regard towards protocol. Immediately the mother should have had all children taken from her, and also should have been arrested on sight just in case she had killed Johessye. This anecdote has been used to show the change that is needed. Perhaps after recent child abuse events a cause will be made to stop the abuse and neglect of children due to foolish social workers and the disregard to standards.
Overall, the procedures and standards in Child Protective Services are flawed. From fatalities to too many cases, CPS needs to take charge and provided more discipline upon the companies working to protect the children. First there needs to be more workers hired. Among the new employees, there needs to be mass training and refreshing courses provided. Also, to prevent tragedies such as Jhessye Shockley, a more simple and effective flow of procedures should be introduced to CPS. Perhaps if the nation came together to help protect the children through cracking down on CPS, the world would see a change.
As a writer you do have some well qualities within this essay. I notice a strong use of statistics, however you add too many quotations. This essay should be paraphrased more, or have more of your own analysis within it.
I see that you want more discipline within the regulations of CPS, however you beat the idea with a rope and are quite redundant. You show some mechanic errors as well within comma's and i think you could use help with your vocabulary and widening it. Other than those few flaws, i found this research to be specific, and intriguing.
