A Special Thank you to my Supervisor

To my supervisor,

Thank you so much for your help this semester. You were very supportive of me working and attending school full-time. No matter how busy you were, anytime I needed a question answered you made time for me. Thank you for coming in on the weekend when I needed a court report signed. We also had some great laughs with the team. I learned a lot of valuable information that I will take with me in my future endeavors. I appreciate you and everyone that made my internship there a memorable one. Thank you for everything!

Sincerely,

Jamie Gates

What I Learned this Semester

I really enjoyed my internship at the Department of Child Services. I learned so much and gained a lot of useful tools to use in the future. My goal at the beginning of the semester was to foster positive relationships with key stakeholders in the community and to help families get access to services in the community in order to keep families together. I also wanted to gain experience in being able to recognize signs of abuse and neglect. I believe I met each of my goals. I met a lot of different people from various organizations that partner with DCS. I also got a chance to meet different attorneys and judges that have a major influence on the families DCS serves. Lastly, I was able to put the parents and children I worked with in touch with various community resources to help the families get needed services. Overall, the internship was a lot of work, but very rewarding. Being able to build relationships with children and watching them grow was one of the best things about working at DCS.  

Career Services

A position with the department of child safety that I checked out was the DCS Program Specialist position. This position is responsible for conducting high profile investigations. The investigations include those towards foster homes, employees, and reports that cause conflicts of interest to a particular unit. Besides high profile investigations, there are a number of other duties that DCS Program Specialists perform. For example, they serve in special work groups, supports the unit supervisor, conducts staff trainings, and represents DCS by attending community meetings.

I think this position would be interesting and encompass many aspects. This position would have an array of tasks so that every work day would be different. This position would also be at a fast pace so work days would go by fast. This position may be one that I keep in mind for the future. I think it would be neat to work with cases that require a higher level of care when handling them. Also, this position requires working with community partners to forge positive relationships. This is important for DCS employees. DCS needs to work with communities in order to keep children safe. This is a position I would definitely look into further.

Court Reports

Recently my caseload doubled at DCS. This has been a difficult transition. It feels like the more I try to climb from under the work, the more I get piled on me. Unfortunately, when I received the cases, many of them had court reports that were due around the same time. I did not think I would be able to get done with them in time for court, but I just took it one report at a time. Generally a court report should reach the judge 15 days prior to the court hearing, but because the cases were given to me at the last minute and many need reports completed, I was not able to send some to the judge until one day prior to court. This is not good practice. This means that the judges have less than a day to prepare for the court hearing.

The plan was that after I got through the court reports for the new cases, that I would make sure court reports were completed on time going further. I hate showing up to court with a late court report. Some judges really yell at DCS workers regarding late court reports. I was blessed because I did not get yelled at by any job for the late reports. Judges tend to remember certain things about some DCS workers, I did not want the late court report to be one of them. I think with time, some of the shock from the high caseload will wear off and I will feel more comfortable managing the caseloads.

Dependency Trial

I participated in my first dependency trial. It was pretty intense. Since I did not have the case long, I did not have to testify. Instead, an investigator from my office had to testify since she was the one who originally removed the child in question from his parents. Court can be very intimidating, especially when the parent’s attorneys are trying to prove that DCS removed a child in error even if that is not the case.

As a result of going to the dependency trial, I learned some very valuable information to help me when I may have to testify. The first thing that I learned was to always take good notes and make sure I post the notes in our system as timely as possible. If there is no note or record of what happened, it is like it never happened. I also learned to make sure I watch what I say to parents during conversations because what I say can be used against me later. Lastly, I learned that it is very important to always show up prepared for trials. Even if DCS feels that we have all the proof we need to uphold a dependency, if we are not prepared for trial, it can completely dismiss the whole case.  

Strengths of my Organization

The Department of Child Services (DCS) has some great strengths as an organization. One of their strengths is that management supports lower-level employees with the decisions they make. Management allows DCS workers a huge amount of discretion when it comes to making decisions on their cases. Management will stand behind decisions made while helping to resolve potential problems if need be. Another strength is that DCS has employees who really care about helping families stay together. There are people who endure the long hours and little pay just because they enjoy helping families. In public service, that quality is very important to have. If someone is looking to get rich in public service they are in the wrong field. There is also continued training so that employees can stay up-to-date on organizational policies and best practices.

If I was in charge of a similar organization I would look into ways to keep high employee turnovers down. Employee turnovers cause a lot of strain on existing DCS employees. Because of the high turnovers, employees have to take on extremely higher than normal caseloads. Perhaps a streamlining of some tasks may help to relieve some of the pressures of high caseloads off of DCS employees. DCS employees also have to see children on their caseloads once a month which causes extra stress, especially when DCS employees have court reports to write and have to appear in court proceedings. I would have employees that do nothing but visit kids all month and share their findings with the regular assigned case manager. This will also relieve strain on case managers.

Monthly Staffings

Each month I staff cases with my supervisor. During the monthly Staffing we talk about how cases are going and any new findings on the case. We also discuss services in place for parents and children. We also discuss how the parents and children are doing with the implemented services. This is a good time for me to have any case specific questions answered and get my supervisors opinion. As a DCS case manager, we get some discretion when it comes to making vital case decisions. This is why it is important for me to be on the same page as my supervisor so if I have to make split-second decisions, I already know how my supervisor would want me to proceed. Therefore, monthly staffings have really helped me get a better grasp on the DCS processes.