Silencing Survivors

Stories from the Inside

Most child welfare agencies tend to embrace secrecy because the people who lead them tend to be mediocre and don't want you to see how poor a job they are doing. ~Richard Wexler

The first time I saw it I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was sitting in front of a team of professionals who were supposed to comprise a multi-disciplinarian team that would decide if kids could go into group homes or residential treatment. The process was new—or rather, it was resurrected after years of being disregarded. I was asking for one of the youths on my caseload to go to a group home she had been in before, and she was asking to return to about two months after her discharge, and after a risky runaway episode in which she was sexually trafficked.

The multi-disciplinary team was comprised of several Indiana Department of Child Services professionals. Most of them had once held the role of Case Manager, except for the random nurse on the team. She was a “yes” nurse, meaning whatever CPS wanted, they could get a yes from her. The rest were now in supervisory roles or in some kind of role that ended in the word “Specialist.” There was nothing multi or disciplinarian about this group of decision makers.