The recent suicide of Amanda Wallace rekindled the horror of an unforgettable tragedy. On April 19, 1993, only months after the courts returned him to his mother, 3-year-old Joseph Wallace watched as she tied an extension cord around his neck, waved goodbye and kicked a stool out from under his tiny body.
Later that year, Gov. Jim Edgar fired three state child-welfare workers after outlining a list of failures that he said led to the death of Joseph. He accused the caseworker for the state Department of Children and Family Services, her supervisor and an administrator of ignoring red flags, failing to take action and misunderstanding their jobs.
As a former child-welfare worker in Ohio, I am as sad as anyone about what happened. At the same time, I am painfully aware of how easily another Joseph could slip through the system.
A caseworker is responsible for children who are referred to DCFS after evidence of abuse or neglect. A caseworker is supposed to visit the family at least monthly, ensure that the abuse has stopped and the children are safe, and see that the family is getting the help it needs.
It is truly amazing to watch a strong, capable caseworker at work, and I can think of many. They have an uncanny ability to motivate people–including some who may be inherently evil–to better themselves.
But the truth is that no matter how great a caseworker is, children still are going to be abused.
When I was on the front lines, before leaving social work for journalism, I often felt as though society had abandoned me and the youngsters I was supposed to protect. Although few people came forward to help–witnesses wouldn’t leave their names, relatives kept quiet, even professionals backed away–everyone was there later to criticize.
I remember a family in Ohio living in a station wagon while the father worked odd jobs. They came to the attention of my agency because one of the children, a 3-year-old girl weighing no more than 14 pounds, had starved to death. Her father drove around for nearly a day with her decomposing body in the car next to her sisters, as he went about painting a home.
Eventually released from jail, he remarried and had more children. A caseworker was not allowed to interfere with his new family, despite the past, because no complaints had been filed against him.
Now more than ever, as society drops its worst problems onto the laps of child-welfare workers, it is vital such workers be monitored for burnout and given the support they desperately need.
I often have wondered how no one apparently could see that Joseph was in terrible danger.
One of the supervisors in the Wallace case who was fired said his excuse for overlooking the danger was that no one told him Amanda Wallace wasn’t taking her medication to control her schizophrenia, and that she had been skipping her counseling appointments.
The Wallace file should have contained a thick stack of evidence from psychologists, counselors, ministers–anyone who had contact with her and could verify her behavior. Regular progress reports from these people should have been requested by the caseworker and stuffed in the file.
The supervisor wasn’t told? He should have asked.
How did the caseworker fail Joseph? Was she afraid of the mother? Apathetic because of other families, other cases, other misery? Burned out?
Caseworkers should be given a chance to talk about the feelings that can develop when working with deeply troubled families and how those feelings are affecting their work. It is not enough to have academic and practical knowledge about child abuse. Many factors–anxiety about being harmed by angry parents, the desire to be liked by clients, the need to be in control–can threaten a caseworker’s ability to be an effective, strong voice for children.
When I think back, I probably wasn’t prepared for the intense feelings that arose when I tackled my first caseload in 1984. My list of families started small, then grew and continued growing until I was in charge of about 40 children.
When threatened, I felt I was supposed to be tough, even when a furious father told me he would blow my head off with a shotgun. Another parent commanded his German shepherd to attack me.
A colleague had a knife pulled on her. Another caseworker’s client, who worked for the government, sent her a Christmas card and scribbled the caseworker’s Social Security number on it. He knew where she lived.
Despite such incidents, our job was to meet with families, display no biases and somehow help them get their lives straightened out. I might be required to pay another visit to a house after a man had threatened me with a knife.
Police officers went into the same kinds of neighborhoods armed with weapons, radios and authority. We went in with notebooks and calendars.
Nor was I prepared the first time a child said, “I hate you.” Any social worker will admit that hurts. It hurts deeply, no matter how adept one is at squelching emotions.
As a friend who was a caseworker for eight years recalled: “I remember being in the emergency room with a child and he was screaming at me, `I hate you! Let me see my mommy!’ All I was trying to do was save that kid’s life. Everyone seemed to blame me. Even a nurse told me: `This child has been in here before. What took you so long?’ “
I left social work in 1989 mostly because I grew tired of walking through a mall and silently questioning every father I saw with his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. I know things–terrible things–that no human being should ever have knowledge of. My view of life had become distorted. I realized that. I wanted to change.
Not long ago, news reached me from Ohio about three boys who had been taken from their abusive parents and placed in a foster home years ago by the state agency, Children Services.
The boys are teenagers now and told authorities what they had actually experienced in what appeared to be, by all accounts, a loving and nurturing foster home. The foster father had sexually abused the boys almost from the day they arrived on his doorstep.
I had placed them there.
A little over a week ago, Joseph’s incarcerated mother, Amanda, strangled herself. It made me think a lot about those three boys. I’ve cried a lot. There is every indication that Amanda Wallace, once a ward of the state, grew up in a home devoid of love. She was abused, tortured and suffered from mental illness. She eventually killed her own child. Then herself.
I wonder a lot about those boys I tried to help. But mostly I fear what they will grow up to become.
