I read Dennis’s Copious Notes this weekend regarding the boy who had been tortured by his mother’s maggot of a live-in boyfriend.. and I agreed with him.

Dan Phelps took some similar swipes last week as well, and I agreed with him as well.

And Dennis knows me, I am the first to defend the Department of Social Services. From the inside, I tend to see the work they do with what little they have to work with.

The many cases of abuse such as this one brings you to tears. I don’t know how many times in the past that I just couldn’t walk through the lobby at the DSS office for fear I would look into the face of another child looking for a placement… the fear being that I would start up once again with another kid, knowing that my heart is often much bigger than the resources I have to offer.

Yes, the Department must look at this and figure out what went wrong.

Phelps is wrong in trying to scapegoat the Commissioner. The last Commissioner, Harry Spense, was the best you could ask for. He reorganized the department, putting a true focus on the needs of the family and rearranging resources to fund services that could actually help.

But the press had a few high-profile cases to throw in his face, and he had to be taken down.

Now we have a department where many of the adolescent residential treatment centers have been closed down, because (we were told) the money for that treatment would be redirected into the communities. “Help them at home,” we were told. Never happened. Now we not only get very few services for the kids, but there is nowhere to send the ones who truly need residential treatment.

Outreach workers to help the kids aging out of the system seem to be non-existent now. The aging-out services (housing, banking, education, work) for kids leaving the care of the state all fall on the regular case-workers who have little to no training or time to do this on top of their regular cases.

Morale at the department seems the lowest I’ve seen it. Foster parent retention remains a critical issue.

Some improvements are currently in process at the state. Improved pay for foster parents (to tie their rate to the federal determination of what it costs to raise a child in your region) may get through this year. Additional social workers to reduce caseload could help some, reinstitution of adolescent outreach workers should be required.

Yes, the department must look at this case and see what went wrong, and they will.

But we must support them as well.

Social services should not be the first department cut every time there is an economic crisis. We as a society also must make a priority of one of the departments that has such an awesome responsibility… the taking of a child from his or her parents.  This means the additional responsibility of providing the resources and environment to allow that child to grow to adulthood in as successful a manner that we can.

And of course, more people need to individually get involved. If we have decided as a society that warehousing and orphanages are not the solution, then more need to take up the burden of taking in a child that needs a home (and no, Dennis, you’re not too old.. lol).