The hard truth of child protection work

I was a worker for a few years in the Canadian child welfare system. 

I stare at this blank page and think about how it’s difficult to find the words that seem right to describe those years.  I want to write the truth. There is so much – a swirl of events that I cycle through in my mind – some of them just fragments now as my child welfare career slips further into my history.

I wonder about the concept of truth. How do I tell a true story of doing child welfare work?  What is the relationship between the ‘truth’ of my experience and the stories I tell?  What is my responsibility to the concept of truth in a post truth world? What is my responsibility to truth in a child welfare world that speaks of reconciliation and reparation?   

My memories of child welfare are filled with images of mothers.  When I did child welfare work, the focus was on mothers. At that time, this truth was unquestioned. 

Today, I am thinking about Mary Ann, a tall heavy-set woman with large brown piercing eyes and a sense of solitude about her.  Age -- around 30 years old – mother of two school-aged children. Mary Ann would stare directly into my eyes and respond to any question I would ask with a bruised, yet fierce, voice. Her eyes revealed little and her measured words were blunt. She lived in the poverty of social assistance which permitted a three-bedroom second floor walk-up apartment in an aging, and by all appearances, neglected home in the downtown urban core. I did not inquire about her extended family and, although I do not know if this is true, I imagined her to be friendless.

She hated all workers generally, but she really hated parent aides. “Who do they think they are?” she’d rail. “Telling me how to raise my kids.  They probably don’t have kids themselves”. That statement always made me self-conscious.  At the time, I didn’t have children and I was fairly certain that her declaration was a message for me too – letting me know -- that she knew --that I really didn’t know anything about her parenting world. In hindsight, that is an absolute truth, although I would have denied it at the time, if asked. 

Everyone at the office knew this “case”. She was labelled a frequent flyer– a chronic neglecter. Mary Ann called us frequently and people called about her as often. There was not enough evidence to move her children into foster care but enough chaos to ensure the file stayed open.  “These are hard cases” I was told.  “We try to make sure that no one caseload has too many of these on it.  Try to limit your contact as much as possible because ones like this can be manipulative.  You don’t want to get sucked in”.  These judgements are harsh. They were harsh then - part of a dehumanizing short-hand seemingly understood only by child welfare workers – a downloading of blame to mothers for the pressures and impossibilities of the work and a strategy for distancing her from my care and compassion. 

At one point the thinking had been that if we just close Mary Ann’s file, maybe things will get better – there was a theory that she was locked in a chronic neglectful pattern to keep child welfare engaged.  If we withdrew, the pattern of neglect might disappear too, so theory went.  

I’d like to think that perhaps the file closure was an acknowledgement that we really weren’t doing anything helpful for this family, except perhaps for the provision of the odd food voucher which we doled out with a stinginess that might make you think the funds were coming from our personal bank account. This ‘help’ was dutifully noted as an indication of her inability to manage money. Anyway, the file closure didn’t last long. Back to court we went for another supervision order.  The terms of the order remained the same as before. 

Sometimes the two children never made it to school. When they did, a teacher would routinely call to say their lunches were unhealthy or they were dressed in filthy clothes. School teachers were always mad that I didn’t put the children in a foster home. “What does it take before you will treat this seriously”, they’d implore. 

One time, after a series of complaints were called in, I showed up unannounced.  The apartment was in disarray – worse than usual.  Mary Ann was there – she was different – there was less fury. She was preoccupied and upset. She worried that Cory and her were done.  

I remember when Cory became her boyfriend.  He was bad news – scary news to be more precise. I knew Mary Ann was afraid. She’d assure me that the children didn’t know him.  He only came around after they were asleep. “Change the locks,” I said, naively. “Why?” she said – “so he can kick the door in.  I can’t afford that”. The children didn’t really seem to know him, if they did, they weren’t talking about him. There was nothing much we could do about this. She was doing things to protect the children from him.  I had no evidence to the contrary. 

On the day she seemed different, I tried to talk with Mary Ann about her inherent worth as a person. “You deserve better than him”, I announced. Tears welled in her eyes for just a moment. This day was the first of only two times I ever saw the emotions typically masked by her fury. She told me that she had been through a lot in her life. As she spoke those words, she punched the glass pane of her kitchen window and broke it. I don’t remember any blood, just the shatter of glass. That she had been through a lot is all she said – no details.  Later, when things were calmer I pressed just a little – she retreated. “I don’t want my life showing up in court documents,” she said. 

I didn’t record this exchange. I knew it could easily be misconstrued as her instability, perhaps used as evidence of a propensity for violence, and that just wasn’t fair.    

I was relieved when the relationship was interrupted by Cory’s arrest for a string of armed robbery charges. Mary Ann simply shrugged when I raised it with her.   

Several months later Cory escaped from prison.  The office was abuzz about whether Mary Ann should be visited. Was it safe? The police told me that the SWAT team had been through her apartment and found no trace of him.  “That’s good!” my supervisor declared.  “You should check on things.” I couldn’t really understand how they could be so sure that he wasn’t there right now, even though the SWAT team had been there earlier in the week. I was more than a little scared. 

I found a furious Mary Ann, angry that the police had pointed guns at her and her children. “Do something about that,” she screamed at me.  “Do you think that’s safe for children?”  

I think it is this next part that makes the memory of this mother more vivid than other memories.  Many months later, I received a summons. By this time, I had moved on with my life. I had become a mother. I decided to go to graduate school, vowing never to return to child welfare work. 

In doing child welfare work you are called upon to tell truth.  You tell mothers that you are trying to get at the truth about what is happening in their family.  You write truth in case notes and you swear to tell the truth when you are giving testimony. These child welfare ‘truths’ carry weight. 

The summons was accompanied by an invitation to come early to study my particular contributions to the very thick file and be briefed on ‘the legal strategy’. Mary Ann’s children were now in foster care and the Society had applied for permanent wardship. Mary Ann was contesting the application. I was one of no less than ten workers scheduled to testify. I recognized some of their faces.  

The legal strategy was to put each of us on the stand to paint a picture for the judge about how years of neglect and chaos had passed without any evidence that Mary Ann could provide a stable and consistent home for the children.  This was the ‘truth’ we were told to put forward. The lawyer said that she will warn the judge that each worker will tell similar stories --- we want to demonstrate the consistency and duration of the neglect.  

The parent aide, the one that Mary Ann really hated, was there – “this should have happened years ago,” she declared.  “The children are so much better off.  The oldest son is in his own foster home. He doesn’t have the stress of trying to look after his younger sister any more.  Now he can just be a kid.”  There were nods of agreement among the workers. I was also told that the son had turned on Mary Ann and given the Society the evidence that they needed to prove her unfitness for mothering and make the permanent wardship order viable. I was also told that Mary Ann had rejected him for what she perceived to be his betrayal. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a court house. They are designed as a symbol of colonial authority. This one had gleaming marble floors and you could look down over the railing at the people on the level below you.  The group of worker witnesses was clustered on the lower level. Mary Ann was alone on the upper level looking down at us when we got the news that she was no longer going to contest the wardship application.  I remember feeling relieved by the news. I suspect Mary Ann could see our collective relief from her vantage point. 

And then, the only other time I ever saw beyond Mary Ann’s fierce exterior occurred. 

I remember she called my name and motioned to me to come to her. I’m ashamed that I really didn’t want her to signal me out like that.  I wanted to blend into the anonymity of the workers. All of them were watching me to see what I would do. I could feel their eyes on me as I climbed the stairs to stand beside Mary Ann. I wondered what they would be thinking. – likely that I was too soft – that I was a big part of the reason this had gone on for so long.  As I climbed the stairs, I remember wondering how to adjust my features to match the emotions of a face to face encounter with Mary Ann. 

As I neared her, I could see that she looked resigned. I say an awkward “hi” and wait for her to speak. Although I’m sure we exchanged more words than I can remember – what I clearly know she said was – “I got rid of Cory”–– there was a pause after she said  that -- -- “at least that’s one good thing – I wanted you to know”.  I imagine that I told her I was sorry about all that was happening today. I also imagine that she had no reaction to those insufficient words. 

I wonder often about what became of her. I have not seen or heard about Mary Ann again. Sometime later, I learned from a child welfare worker that Mary Ann’s daughter had become a young mom - and that she was turning out to be just like her own mother.  Neglectful – getting “services “ and not really “cooperating.”  

Today, this story gnaws in my gut. I was inserted into Mary Ann’s life as a state agent – to monitor and report on her, although we had used more palatable language to describe those services. Regardless, these actions harmed her and her children. By extension, I harmed her and her children. Mary Ann remained trapped in poverty. She remained a suspect to be investigated and policed until stripped of her children. Then she disappeared from the system.  

Maybe what gnaws at me is that we stoked the separation between Mary Ann and her oldest child for the sake of evidence.  I can’t prove that but I know that. Years of intrusive questioning and communication that signals a disapproval and subtle disdain for your mother surely wears a child down. What are the consequences of such trauma?  

Maybe it is that I didn’t advocate for her. I believed the assessments and used the child welfare protocols that were available to me.  I was too young, too inexperienced, too overwhelmed to imagine a different pathway. I was too pre-occupied with myself - trying to survive in the job and find acceptance among colleagues. 

Maybe what gnaws at me is that the only two moments of humanity that I can recall were not told. The record is not ‘straight’ about who Mary Ann was as a person or a mother. 

I filled in the gaps with a familiar narrative assigned to impoverished women who find themselves on a child welfare caseload.  But I didn’t know her - what she liked or disliked - how she spent her days. I didn’t know about her friends or her dreams. In fact, she was not Mary Ann – she was ‘the client’.  I was ‘the worker’. We performed roles. 

I worry now about the word truth.  What does it really mean to tell truth? 

Telling this truth is about knowing that I caused harm. The story of the consequences of this harm belongs to Mary Ann and her children.  

Today my commitment is to honesty, for myself. I want to tell the story as honestly as I can.  It is a story of my complicity inside a system that has for generations perpetrated harm; and for Indigenous families and children genocide. You can decide what is true and what is not, how it aligns with your experience and how it’s different – whether it’s believable or not.