Photo by romfarer/johanne ådnegard on flickr
MSW IV-E Child Welfare students write a field journal throughout the course of their internships. In these journal entries, students reflect on their growth, experiences, strengths, challenges, difficulties, successes, supervision, learning, insights, etc. from the field placement. Below is a recent field reflection from a current IV-E student interning in a child protection county agency here in Minnesota.
“As I begin to write this journal, a particular case comes to mind. An eight-year-old girl was placed in foster care after reports of physical abuse came in by the school. Her mother, out of anger, had beaten her face with a curtain rod and her butt with a belt. Photos were taken three days after the incident and 8-10 deep red marks remained on her face. Throughout this past summer the mom has done a lot of work to improve, including everything written within the case plan. The first time I met her was at court about a week and a half ago, in which she was granted reunification with her daughter. She held it together long enough to have discussion about visits and holidays with the father, but once she stepped out of the court area the tears came. My task supervisor reinforced how hard she has worked to get to this point. It was very clear that this woman loves her daughter with all of her heart.
“On Monday, a little over a week since the reunification, I went with my field instructor to visit this little girl at school. She is beautiful, smart and clearly has a strong relationship with my field instructor. As we chatted with her she told us about how things were going at home. She shook her hand back and forth to express that it was ‘so so.’ She told us about a night when her mom was yelling at her to do her homework and told her to shut up. She came to school the next day and told the teacher that she was scared to go home. We discussed this more and she said she was afraid that her mom was going to hit her again. My field instructor asked if she thought her mom would do that, and she said yes. My field instructor started to tell her about all of the hard work her mom has been doing and reinforcing how much she loves her. What a tough conversation.
“As I reflect on this case, my heart really goes out to this mother. She has done a lot of work, with a lot of emotions along the way, to get her child back home, but the work is nowhere near done. For possibly the first time, I stopped to really consider how challenging it must be to be reunited, something parents have long desired, and then to have their child not feel the same. There is so much training that goes into supporting foster and adoptive families to equip them with the tools to be successful. Parenting kids with trauma histories is very tough and it takes dedicated foster and adoptive parents to really meet the needs of those children. But what about the birth parents? They haven’t received all of that training; they’ve just barely reached a place where they are taking care of themselves effectively. I cannot imagine the kind of strength it must take for a parent to not only work on their own issues that are affecting their parenting, but to also take all of the added steps in parenthood to make up for what their child has missed along the way. It really emphasizes the importance of support for families after reunification, otherwise the added stress may just bring them back to where they started. It’s important work that we do as child protection workers: having the opportunity to encourage and empower parents to believe that they are capable is a gift.”