Child Welfare Worker

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Recommended: Chapter 7 social work practice in the field

The job of a child welfare worker appears to be a demanding profession that promotes the child’s safety, but also strengthens the family organization around them in order to successfully raise the children. This child welfare workers work in the system known as the Child Protective Services whose initiative is to protect the overall welfare of the child. The short novel From the Eye of the Storm: the Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker by Cynthia Crosson-Tower demonstrates the skills necessary to deal with the practice of social work along with both its challenges and its happy moments. The novel consists of some of the cases involving Tower’s actual career in social work. In reading the book, I was able to experience some of the actual cases in which children dealt with physical and mental abuse from their families that caused them to end up within the system. Also, some of these children had issues in adapting to foster and adoptive families based on the issues they faced earlier in life. As we have learned earlier in the course, the violence that a child experiences early in life has an overall affect on the person they become as they grow into adulthood. When children deal with adverse childhood experiences, they are at a higher risk for abusing drugs and/or alcohol, increased likelihood of abusing their own child or spouse, higher rates of violent and nonviolent criminal behavior, along with several other issues throughout their lifespan. One of the cases found in the novel by Cynthia Crosson-Tower dealt with a little girl by the name of Jessica Barton. Although still a small child, her foster family had an issue trying to raise her in which she gave them behavioral issues and she would not react to them and was hard to ... ... middle of paper ... ...ild welfare worker includes excitement, joy, sadness, frustration, fear, and sometimes harmony once a child is placed successfully. Overall, I have no questions as to what takes place within the child protective services because Toler’s experiences and cases are well defined in her book. I was surprised by some of the manner’s in which the children were handled, whether it is with the foster parent, adoptive parents, or the biological. Regardless, every child deserves a chance within the system; it is about the best interests of the child and interests of the families and parents. Works Cited Crosson-Tower, Cynthia. From the Eye of the Storm: The Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker. Boston: Pearson Education Inc., 2003. Print. Garbarino, James. Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 1995. Print.

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