Child Welfare System Case Study

Child welfare system was originated with the goals that social workers would try and alleviate poverty and its impact; however as the years have passed, the child welfare system turned into a child protection system directed toward investigating abuse and neglect, and removing children from families and placing them in foster care, and is no longer prepared to assist in resolving the problems of child poverty (Lindsey, 2004). Child welfare system has been developed around the residual approach which demands that aid should be given only after the family is in crisis or other support groups have failed to meet a child’s minimal needs. However, over the years, there have been different focuses for the child welfare system, whether it involved
Police are sometimes stereotyped to be rugged, single minded enforcers who are insensitive to families in their most vulnerable state (Cross, Finkelhor, Ormrod, 2005). This would be an ideal approach to implement; however there seem to be difficult relationships between the two systems as they both hold different values and beliefs. As an intern for DCFS, I have witness the “complicated” relationships that the two systems hold. Some police departments don’t believe it is necessary for a dual investigation; when it is the job of the children social work to investigate the abuse. During an investigation, the police arrived at the home, however, he refused to do his own investigation as he stated “you guys are already here, I don’t need to be here. I just need to make sure everything is okay, and the children are safe.” There can be some improvements in how the police system is involved with the child abuse investigation, in order to allow the child welfare workers to focus on providing services to disadvantaged families. Since caseloads are high, most child welfare workers have limited time span to work and focus on the families’ issues; such as, financial stability, social and emotional
Implementing successful prevention strategies will require the need to provide assistance to the entire family and focus both on the child’s safety and well-being as well as the parents’ emotional and economic well-being. Child welfare system can provide resources such as child care services for single parents who lack education, which limits their employment. Such services can help the family become financially stable, and hopefully get out of living in poverty. Most services provided to families by the child welfare system have really complicated requirements that make it nearly impossible for them to receive all the necessary resources. For example, the child welfare system currently provides the family with a packet of resources, in which the family on their own must contact agency after agency for services, just to be notified that there are fees to receive services or there are long waiting lists. For the most part, families are then discouraged from asking for further assistance. The child welfare system needs to be able to address the underlying issues that disadvantaged families are dealing with, which may be playing a role in the child