School: Georgia State University College of Law

I learned more about Georgia's child welfare system in six weeks at the Georgia Supreme Court's Child Placement Project than I have ever learned about a single subject in such a short period of time. By conducting extensive court observations and case file reviews of 13 Georgia counties, working alongside committed and knowledgeable child advocates, and meeting judges, attorneys and social workers around the state, I was exposed to a broad spectrum of the Georgia juvenile court system. Throughout my summer immersion into Georgia's child welfare system, I made mental and written notes of the practices that appeared to be working and those that begged improvement. Two clear themes arose during my summer internship, and predictably, these themes were the amount of resources devoted to child welfare and the quality and commitment of the individuals serving the system.

The State must better compensate foster parents to encourage more moderate-income individuals and couples with good hearts to consider fostering children. Foster children must be placed with caring, committed people. One consequence of placing children - especially teenagers - in low-quality, unloving group homes is that those group homes often use the juvenile justice system as a form of discipline instead of child-friendly, developmentally appropriate measures. I felt sick and angry when I watched a fourteen year-old in Gwinnett County get placed in Department of Juvenile Justice custody for getting into a minor slap-fight after another teenager in his group home physically provoked him. While the government cannot substitute for loving parents, there must be enough willing people who, if fairly compensated, would provide adequate supervision and discipline for foster children and in doing so, spare them condemnation to juvenile detention halls as a result of petty fights, minor drug use, and other typical teenage behaviors. A good foster parent offers an invaluable service in providing a safe temporary home for a developing child who already has experienced the trauma of being separated from her biological parents. However, Georgia is in dire need of more dedicated foster parents to reduce the number of children in crowded group homes, and it appears that increased funding is necessary and inevitable. Reducing crowded placements is an important aspect of the Kenny A. consent agreement, so it will be interesting to monitor DHR's progress on this issue.

The competence of case managers is another topic that underscores the connection between the State's resource allocation and positive results for children. Of course, it is common knowledge that social workers are under-compensated. But working at the Child Placement Project taught me the seriousness of the DFCS caseworker's job, the positive impact that a conscientious caseworker can make, and the maltreatment that children frequently receive from unqualified, overworked caseworkers.

One day in Judge Franzen's Gwinnett County courtroom, I observed caseworkers at both ends of the competence spectrum. One case manager impressed me as being extremely committed to her job because she was the only DFCS employee that I saw testify without referring to written notes, and she provided more specific answers than caseworkers who brought the child's entire file to the witness stand. Her body language, demeanor, and familiarity with the facts of the case epitomized the characteristics of a pro-active, competent caseworker. Later that day, I was disgusted as another DFCS caseworker and her supervisor, the director of adoption planning for Gwinnett County DFCS, provided evasive, non-responsive answers to a child advocate attorney's inquiry into why a child's adoption was delayed by the Department's administrative failure to simply file a petition to terminate a biological mother's parental rights more than one year after the parent voluntarily surrendered them in court.

I believe that child advocates, academics, and community leaders should investigate the potential effectiveness of initiating a "Teach For America - style" program to recruit qualified social workers into the child welfare system. In recent years, tens of thousands of college seniors and recent college graduates have applied to Teach For America, indicating a large body of young people with an inclination toward social justice and an interest in needy children. By offering competitive salaries and stipends for graduate level social work classes, the State could entice bright, committed, hard-working college graduates that would not otherwise have considered a career in social work. Ideally, such a program could be studied and implemented as a pilot project and then promoted on a larger scale if it proves to be cost-effective. Further, the State must commit resources to study and implement systemic solutions to ongoing obstacles, such as increasing the availability of mental health treatment programs for children and parents that need immediate placement in a residential facility.