Imagine being a child in an abusive or toxic home without a system to help you. Millions of children feel that daily.
Seventy two percent of abuse cases are never reported by social workers and almost half of children who were confirmed as abused or neglected never received follow up treatment.
Social workers are overworked and underpaid and if anything, harm more kids than they help because of the mental stress. Social workers have unmitigated power to intervene for the better or for the worse. Workers face a lot of challenges that include dealing with very serious issues like abuse, substance abuse, criminal activity, etc. This causes a lot of workers to deal with career burnout causing harm to everyone. Burnout causes workers to not fully be invested in work. It makes being a social worker very difficult because they must be fully invested in helping others while they’re dealing with burnout. It is not that social workers are useless it is just an endless cycle of burnout and lack of motivation to work that harms kids.
Social services advocates for basic resources such as food, healthcare, and safe housing. Social services is a political issue when it should not be. The government does not seem to care for the children and gives little to no funding for social services, making it difficult to give food, healthcare and safe housing like advocated. The most neglected part of social services is the safe housing. Over 15 million kids are raised in abusive homes and 42% of those kids were killed in these homes and reported to CPS but never received any help. This is because social services has little to no funding from the government and has nowhere to put them. Yet they are not safer in temporary homes and the US government makes it difficult to adopt children. So yet again it is an endless cycle of toxicity and abuse.
The solution to not having such a bad system is simple yet so difficult. It is a political issue that could be solved if the people elected people who cared for the country’s wellbeing. The government needs to not be filled with selfish people who claim to care and do nothing.
A good system could be the solutions to a lot of problems. Crime rate and homelessness would go down. A child in an abusive home by law is not allowed to leave until they are considered an adult at 18. So, in many cases kids run away from these abusive home’s and are forced to make a living somehow. Many of those kids end up being homeless because where else could they go? They end up stealing to live and eventually they will lose sight of themselves and keep doing bad things just to keep living.
Social workers/services will never be reliable if as a community we continue to elect good-for-nothings. Something needs to be done and it starts with us.
Photo by Vivek Sharma on Unsplash
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