Here in Godzown country we have a social security organisation called DOCS. I think it’s full name is Department of Community Services but for many over the years it’s become known as the Department of Child Suffering.
Again and again the papers report cases where kids in need have not received the help they desperately required and have eventually died, often at the hands of their parents.
In one notorious case a few weeks ago, they were contacted no less than 7 times about the lack of care of a pair of siblings and not just by ‘the public’ but by the police, teachers and the like yet no action was taken. The mother eventually left the kids with a couple of paedophiles… you can probably guess the rest.
After a week the little boy choked and died on his own vomit as he was being raped and the little girl is now in a secure unit receiving ongoing psychiatric support, refusing to fully discuss what was done to her.
And now today we learn of a 1 year old who has died. Tho the details are sketchy is seems DoCS has failed our kids again.
I understand how hard it is for them to keep track of the kids they look after and to prioritise cases, so before we jump on the caseworkers, who will feel traumatised and horror struck themselves that they didn’t act, maybe we ought to think hard on how we expect these people to do the work we expect at the level it should be done with the minimal funding they get?
We foster kids, and the case workers we deal with have 5 – 6 kids on their books max… because the agency we work through is separate to Docs. On the other hand, the case workers who work directly for DoCS often have 50+ families to handle.
Thinking it through, if they worked a 50 hour week it would mean they only had one hour to devote to each *family*. Bearing in mind (even if they tried) it would take most of that hour just to get between their office and wherever these kids and are never mind being able to carry out any proper assessment.
Now… if they have over 50 cases, and work a 37 hour week… and the parents and kids aren’t wherever they are supposed to be… and the worker has paperwork to do on each visit… etc etc etc, you can see why some kids for short periods at most every few months.
What is needed is a massive injection of cash into the system and a huge influx of competent trained workers. Neither will happen of course because while we raise our hards in horror over each child that is maimed or dies, in the end we turn our backs and refuse to pay more taxes.
The Eclectic Interweb 