Broken Child- Role of the SW

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Arizona State University *

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Oct 30, 2023

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After watching this documentary, describe your perspective on the social work role within child advocacy. While watching the documentary, there were a variety of thoughts occurring in my mind. The first reaction was seeing the living condition the children were living in. The living condition entail the cleanliness of the children’s home, child neglect and the parents presently smoking and doing drug in front of the children. My perspective on the social work role within child advocacy is that social workers play a crucial role in advocating for the wellbeing of the children by fighting for inclusion, social justice and equality ( The Intersection of Social Work and Advocacy , 2019). I believe that as social workers we strive to provide and meet the needs of the clients (child and their families) first and provide them with the tools they need to be able to advocate for themselves in the future. Throughout the process of advocacy, social workers are not only assisting the children in having a healthy environment, but social workers are also fighting for the larger community of children that are still waiting to be assisted by their community themselves. Social workers involved in child advocacy are a bridge that many families need in order to be connected to community resources families may not be aware of. This also include social workers providing educational presentations on what the child abuse signs are and educate the community that if they see something they need to say something and courage the community that they can remain anonymous when calling in the child abuse hotline. Child advocacy plays an important role in assuring that there are no more victims of child abuse. According to Child Help, statistics show that every year there are more than 4 million referrals that are made to child protection agencies and out of all the referrals an average of 5 children die every day due to child abuse and neglect (2021). As social workers we hope that our role within child advocacy creates a ripple effect on

the community to speak up if they see something and for social workers to keep striving to continue to assist children and their families. What social work skills do you feel would be best utilized and needed when working in the situations presented in the documentary? The social work skills that would be utilized is the importance of assessing, being firm and staying calm during a crisis response. At the beginning for the documentary, a social worker presented themselves with police at a house where they removed children due to them being alone at home for the past three days and were living in a home covered with animal feces. When the social worker arrived, they assessed the current home and made a decision that all the children were going to be under the custody of Child Protective Services. The process of assessing is important as assessing may not be completed initially. For example, if a social worker were to present themselves at a home and ask the caregiver for further clarification on what is occurring in the home, the caregiver may not become aggressive initially until more questions were being asked. Being aware (assessing) of their surroundings are important as their safety is important as well as the children. Thus assessing their environment, the clients appearance and the clients demeanor may assist in protecting all parties involved from potential harm. Another form of assessing is being aware of your personal biases and personal feelings toward the setting you are in. When certain personal biases arise, I believe that it important to assess the biases and if needed talk to someone about it. Without assessing personal biases, clients may not benefit from the your visit as a social worker as you may reframe from being present with the client. Thus client rapport may be lost.

Other skills I feel would be best utilized and needed is firmness and calmness. In the documentary, I observed in a scene how firm the social worker was with the mother when the social worker told the mother that her children will need to stay with one of her family members and not her. When the mother called her family member, the mother told the family member that she was an unfit mother and that is why the social worker was taking her children away. Although the mother was upset, the social worker remained calm and professional during the scenario. Although there are a variety of skills social workers engage in to be ethical with their clients, I believe that reaming calm in a situation is the first step to assure you and the client remain safe. Describe where self-awareness would be imperative for the social worker working within any of the situations shown in the documentary. What microaggressions, if any, are you aware of within the reactions and/or communications within this documentary? Self-awareness is imperative in any social work setting because situations may change throughout the conversation with the client. The client may become distress and may put themselves and the social worker in a situation where all parties involved may get hurt. Although a client may have a great rapport with you, a situation may change drastically at any time thus immediately reaction is needed if a situation were to change. For example, I noticed that when the social worker visited a family’s home and summarized their findings of the home visitation, the social worker told the mother if they had a relative who was willing to take the children in while she cleaned up the home. The mother in the video became overwhelmed with emotion and although she did not hurt herself or others, the mother could have ran away with her children. During the scene, I noticed that the social worker was calm throughout the process and their tone of voice was normal and did not demonstrate that they were above the client.

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Dr. Derald Wing Sue mentioned in his video on microaggressions that as individuals we must be vigilant of our own biases and fears. This means that if we are not self-aware of our biases and fears it can create an unhealthy, uncomfortable, and hostile setting for the client. One microaggression that I noticed was within the relationship of Patricia and her 15 year old son. When Patricia was doing a wellness check on her son, Patricia’s son told her, “don’t act like you can come into my life and act like my mom now”. Although Patricia expressed in the documentary that she told her son she was involved in drugs and prostitution, she expressed that she feels at fault for being absent for her son. Patricia’s fear of being rejected by her son was becoming a reality as her and her son felt disconnected from one another. A personal microaggression that came into my mind while observing the relationship between Patricia and her son was an immediate thought “well it is your fault you have no relationship with your son since you went into prostitution. It was a personal choice. White people are crazy”. I personally had to stop and ask myself what did I say that internally? No I am not racist, but after reflecting on this microaggression I realized that it did does not matter the race or the gender of the person. Patricia went through a child hood trauma which caused her to fall into drugs and prostitution. I felt that I lost myself in the moment instead of remembering her story and what experiences made up Patricia. I felt that this documentary served a reminder to myself to be present with the client and be aware of their story in its entirety and not judge immediately without understanding their perspective. What are you most afraid of in a social work setting? I am most afraid of being in a child protective service (CPS) setting where weapons are involved when doing a home visitation or attending a crisis call. I personally did not grow up with weapons in the home nor have ever held one. My parents have always told me to stay away

from them as their perspective of guns was that they are not good. What my parents never taught me was gun safety. Prior to pursuing my career in social work, I have always thought about possible situations I may encounter which include a situation where weapons are involved. Although I have not fully processed my thought on this social work setting, I hope to be educated and exposed to gun safety so that I may learn a variety of techniques on how to disarm a weapon if needed. Besides learning about gun safety, I have spoken to other social workers who are in CPS and expressed that cops usually come out to the child’s home if a crisis is called. Although I am still learning and exploring this social work setting, I hope to become exposed so that I may decide if CPS is the route I am interested in pursuing. What did you find the most thought-provoking in the documentary? During the documentary, the most thought-provoking was feeling overwhelmed of all the children in the video having horrible living conditions while the parents were there smoking or doing drugs. Seeing the children being neglected became overwhelming for me and I did get teary eyed as I have children of my own and cannot imagine putting them in a situation like that. Observing the parents being numb and not caring for the children really created a sense of urgency and sadness within myself. When I paused the documentary, I processed my personal emotions and came to realization that the scenarios demonstrated in the documentary is only a glimpse of what children are going through today. This documentary created a call to action to be more aware of possible child abuse signs with the children I encounter daily. I believe that this documentary really solidified my thoughts as to why I am pursing social work. I want to be a social worker so that I can be an advocate for children and create a social change so that others may learn how to recognize early signs of child abuse and save children’s lives.

Resources: Child abuse statistics . Childhelp. (2021, October 25). Retrieved August 27, 2022, from https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse-statistics/ Sue, Derald Wing, 2010. Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Wiley, CA. Home Box Office documentary presentation. (2003). Broken child. Princeton, NJ :Films for the Humanities & Sciences The Intersection of Social Work and Advocacy . Brescia University. (2019, April 30). Retrieved August 26, 2022, from https://www.brescia.edu/2019/04/social-work-and-advocacy/)

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