Reflection: A Loose Definition Of Success

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
A Loose Definition of Success
The role of a social worker is to act in the best interest of the children they are working with, to make sure the basic needs of each child is met. The social workers feel as if they are being successful at their jobs as long as the children that are on their caseloads age-out of the foster care system and are not in jail the next day. Or they are successful if the youth they are working with actually graduate from high school. As a social worker it should be seen as successful if the children that they are working with are learning the skills that they need to become well-functioning members of society, and are able to obtain the goals and dreams that they have. To be successful one must
One respondent said that they would purposely just not eat anything while they were in a particular home, this respondent said “I just wouldn’t eat anything they tried to get me to eat. I also wouldn’t talk to anyone in the home, I knew they would call my social worker and then she would move me out of concern. I did this because the home was so bad, there were like five other foster kids there, and then they had three or four kids of their own. I don’t remember exactly how many kids they had because it was so long ago, but it was just a bad home. The foster parents… didn’t ever care to take care of any of the foster kids there, we pretty much had to fend for ourselves. They were either always at work or busy with their kids, but when they did pay attention to us, [the dad] would just yell at us foster kids, or hit us for not doing something that they had left on the never ending chore list.” So this respondent found that acting out was the easiest and most effective way to get what she felt she needed. It was her way of successfully meeting her needs. This respondent also said that
The pain is different for every different youth, and it is expressed or not expressed in different ways as well. These youth are experiencing pain whether we see it or not. The pain they experience could come from being taken away from their families of from feeling like they did not do enough to better themselves so that their families would want to talk to them again. These youth have said they would do anything for their biological families to want to take them back again or even just to have a phone call with someone in their families. Some of these youth who were aging out reached out to the only person they knew who would have contact information for their families, their social workers. One respondent, Jamie, recalls her interaction with her social worker when she was two days from 18, “I tried to get their address or phone number from that bitch who was my social worker… but that dumb bitch said it was not in my best interest to give it to me. What she doesn’t know is that she fucked me over, I have no way of getting the number now. I have called her office and left voicemails and she never calls