Getting a Teenager on Track After Multiple Placements
In the next installment of our social worker walk-aday in our shoes program, two deputies from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s office accompanied two workers from the Chatsworth office on ride-alongs. As usual, the events were dramatic.
The first referral was a placement of a 16-year-old-girl who had run away. Mercedes Chavarria, a new ER social worker, handled the call.
The girl was placed in foster care because both parents and her older brother physically abused her, she routinely witnessed domestic violence and her parents limited her food intake. All have been diagnosed with mental health problems.
With deputies Lisa Mandel, Yaroslavsky’s children’s deputy and former head of the Children’s Law Center, and Joel Sappell, his deputy for special projects, Chavarria found the girl waiting on a bench with lots of luggage. She had already been in three foster care placements, from all of which she had run away. Today they would take her to her fourth.
“We need a better way to equip social workers with more tools and more cooperation from outside agencies. That is going to take some high level discussions.”
— Lisa Mandel
Children’s Deputy to Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky
The rest of the visit was painstaking. In setting the girl up in a new home, the deputies saw the intensity each case can require including paperwork, interviewing and working with families who have been in and out of the system multiple times.
