Are we going in there?

That day I had gotten a referral about concerns for the safety of a child so we hopped in the car and drove to the location. When we arrived at the site a group of people were drinking on the porch. It was 10 a.m. The county representative couldn’t believe I was going inside without a police escort. “Are we going in there?” she wanted to know. “This is what we do,” I explained. Social workers and social work have been in the news the last few days. In the Governor’s budget, which he signed yesterday, the families we serve took a big hit (Read more here). In the Los Angeles Times some of the tough aspects of our jobs and hard decisions we have to make have been highlighted in gruesome stories. Our “Walk a Day” program – where we take elected officials and their representatives out in the field to see our work with their own eyes – is one way we’re fighting through emotion, distraction and politics to improve the system. The premise is that people need to experience what we do in order to help make it work better for the children we serve and for workers. Last week Supervisor Gloria Molina’s deputy Martha Molina spent an intense day on an emergency call where a child was in danger. At the end of the grueling day Molina said she “would not soon forget what we went through.” At the end of my ride-along the county manager was also overwhelmed. “I understand now why you really need someone with experience to do this,” she told me. I’ve been an emergency response social worker for 13 years. Before that I spent three years helping families on the back end — after the ER work is complete. Those three years helped me understand parents. It also showed me just how extreme the situations we encounter can be.