Organized Chaos

Introduction to Social Work is a class undergrad level students must take if they have any desires to continue in the tract of social work, at least at Florida State. In this class, we learned about the history and theories of social work and its home base being the United Kingdom and Europe area. With this basic knowledge, I was under the assumption that practicing this field in the UK would be much more advanced in its ideals and theories than the United States.

Give me a minute while I laugh my head off.

I feel like I have stepped into a time machine and went back 20 years. These people here have NO ORGANIZATION or any clue how to run a child welfare agency. As much as I bitch and complain about Florida's DCF and child protective service agencies, I must say that they know exactly what they are doing to keep children safe. Granted, its only because they need to secure more state funding, grants, and private donors, but at least there is some kind of organization and checks and balances in the system.

First example: In Florida, Child Protective Investigations is just one position. Someone in this position would receive a referral, go to the home in either 24-48 hours, conduct interviews, obtain collaterals, staff with their supervisor and/or attorney, then make a necessary outcome: close the case, transfer to protective services while remaining in the home, or transfer to protective services while [whilst as its stated here] removing the child.

In Croydon? There is a duty officer that makes the intial investigation. There was a time that they could do the investigation over the phone [HOW SO???] but now they are forced to actually go SEE the child and inteview the parents/school teachers/guidance counselors. If they feel they need an assessment, it goes to Child in Need [my team]. We [I] will have 7 days to do an assessment. If I feel like services need to be in place, I'll transfer it to another team that will provide the services. Seeing that I've done DCF in Florida, I can somewhat appreciate the division of responsibilities, but this also causes disorganization and is frankly a waste of time. There is a backlog of cases dating back to... OCTOBER! Yes, OCTOBER. Calls that have come in from October have yet to be investigated. The problem is that the retention in the Croydon staff is extremely hard, primarily because they have staff that are "Locum" which means that they are not permanent Croydon Council staff, but contracted agency staff that can pick up and leave whenever they want. In my team, only the Americans [2 from my group, 3 from the March hires,] 1 South African hire, and 1 supervisor are permanent staff. The rest of the supervisors [called Line Managers] and staff are Locum, which results in turnover to be extremely high.

Throughout the day the other American social workers from the March hire group came in to the office and gave us the nitty-gritty on what it will be like. This is not America, they said. Get that idea out of your head. You're say really won't matter too much because all you are doing is assessing the case, and passing it on to whomever will provide the services. Frankly, this is the reason WHY I chose assessments. I love my profession, I love children, I have an advocacy voice when it comes to abused children, but I cannot take my work home with me [mentally] and I want to leave at 5pm like any normal adult does. This specific team will allow me to do so in that once 5pm hits, I AM DONE.

This afternoon I sat in on a Refocus and Reform group where restructing of Croydon Council was discuss. They are very open to hearing how its done in America and I recommened that they ask us Americans to bring our organizational chart that we use to compare to the drafted organizational chart they are trying to create. I am pleased that she was very open and interested [and genuinely interested] in seeing how its done. She planned a meeting for Friday to speak with us Americans to get our feedback on what she presented and what we are used to back in the States.

Personally, it does not freak me out that there is so much disorganization. My way of thinking is that this is just an means to an end. This is my job, not my life, and I came here to Travel and enjoy the fruit of my labor as much as possible. In the meantime, if I can change and improve the structure of this council, so be it. If I cant, hey, I will at least have tried. Given the fact that all the managers are locum, it was said that once our 6 month probabtionary period is up and if we feel confident enough, we can apply for a manager position. I am not one to stay in a bottom position for too long and I will only stay with an agency long term if I can continue moving up the ranks. I am very pleased that I chose this team, despite the looks of the locals when I stated I am in assessments [the OH CRAP PLEASE DONT QUIT look].

Everything in life is about overcoming challenges and I am not one to back down on a challenge.