RE: CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L digest 1330

["PFONNER, LINDA" <14D691@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

earlier, Trish Leahy wrote:

I was very interested in your comments about the differences between acts of
omission and commission and what they might mean about parents' abilities to
parent appropriately. In my experience, and I have worked in Europe, Asia
and currently, Australia, malice vs lack of parenting skills doesn't appear
to  have a consistently clear relationship with either commission or
omission. My comments, however are based on my practical , rather than
research experience so it could be that I am merely imposing my own world
view on what I have seen! 

But I think that I don't perceive acts of ommission to be "passive"
necessarily. I'm not sure if you read my response to Carryl about this issue
regarding emotional abuse vs emotional neglect. I commented that in either
case, the lived experience of the victim is likely to be one of "I am
unloved/unloveable". So, I too have begun to use the term "maltreatment" (in
my current research) but in reference to any kind of emotional abuse whether
it occurrs by ommission or by commission.

Trisha Leahy  
Senior Psychologist
Australian Sports Commision

Trish,
I can't disagree with you.  I don't think we disagree; we're just looking at
the problem from different points of view, if I'm not mistaken.  I'm not a
researcher, and everything I know about child protection I learned as part
of my experience and training as a CPS field investigator.  Strange as it
sounds, although our task is to protect children, and the children are the
focus of the service plan for a family that needs and/or wants help,
perforce the service plan generally is a list of tasks for the parent to
accomplish:  complete a parenting class, participate in a chemical
dependency program, attend classes for battered spouses, cooperate with DSS
and obey the court orders, etc.  

As the field investigator (our title is simply Child Protection Worker, but
that isn't very descriptive!), my task is simply to identify families from
among those reported to our hotline that are in a situation that results in
the children being maltreated or at risk of maltreatment, and, if necessary
and possible, to arrange for interventions that will resolve or prevent the
matlreatment.  I don't provide the intervention myself, and once the
referrals are made, I rarely hear about outcomes, positive or negative.  So
the children's responses to their treatment by the parents, regardless of
the form that the maltreatment took, is part of my work only in that it
assists in my initial diagnosis of the family's functioning.  But the line
workers like me rarely get to see how the children change after
intervention, or how the parents do.  Ideally, I'm only involved for 60
days.  Then the case is either closed because they don't need help, or
transferred to another part of the Department of Social Services for
monitoring.  

But the difference between acts of commission and the acts of omission are
significant in the way the CPS worker approaches the parent to offer
services.  Yes, we can take a family to Family Court and ask for court
orders requiring a family to comply with a service plan, and this is always
the case when the situation was serious enough that the children were placed
into foster care.  But this makes the relationship between the family and
the agency an adversarial one, and any service provider can tell you about
cases where the family showed up but refused to change, harbored a lot of
anger toward the agency, and took that out on the rest of the family as well
as the services providers.  These families seem unlikely to profit from the
intervention.  But if the services are presented as something that will help
the family, and if the malfunction can be explained to the family without
blaming them for it, in a non-confrontational manner, they are much more
likely to accept services voluntarily, and much more likely to actually
participate, and profit from it.  If the parent profits from it, so do the
children, and that is the goal.

When people hear about what I do for a living, they usually respond with, "I
could never do your job!" and elaborate with something about "those poor
kids."  Yes, some of the kids are in situations where we wouldn't leave a
dog.  But the truly sick-making cases that one hears about are on the news
are on the news because they are rare and unusual; malice is rarely a
significant factor in child maltreatment.  The vast majority of parents love
their children, and try to be the best parent they know how to be.

Isn't that scary?

Linda R. Pfonner
Child Protective Services
478 Main Street, Suite 321
Buffalo NY 14202-4103
716-858-8803
14D691@dfa.state.ny.us

Those who would give up essential Liberty,
to purchase a little temporary Safety, 
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
       ---Benjamin Franklin
                 The Papers of Ben Franklin, ed. L. W. Labaree


> ----------
> From: 	Child Maltreatment
> Researchers[SMTP:CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu]
> Sent: 	Tuesday, February 13, 2001 12:01 AM
> To: 	Child Maltreatment Researchers
> Subject: 	CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L digest 1330
> 
> <<Message: Microsoft Exchange Message>>
> 
> 			    CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L Digest 1330
> 
> Topics covered in this issue include:
> 
>   1) Re: foster care
> 	by "vernon brooks carter" <vbrooks@nh.ultranet.com>
>   2) family conferencing models
> 	by "p kiely" <pck@one.net.au>
>   3) Re: severity rating
> 	by MichaelD55@aol.com
>   4) Re: info on child welfare caseworkers
> 	by "Nico Trocme" <nico.trocme@utoronto.ca>
>   5) Poverty and Brain Development
> 	by Cassandra <cnd@dana.ucc.nau.edu>
>   6) RE: emotional abuse versus emotional neglect
> 	by Trisha Leahy <LeahyT@ausport.gov.au>
>   7) Re: foster care consent for research
> 	by Kristen Humphrey <krrohu@swbell.net>
>   8) McMartin case facts
> 	by lisa fontes <lfontes@javanet.com>
>   9) RE: Stress and mental health of child welfare caseworkers and 
> 	by Revo redux <praxis1@home.com>
>  10) Re: info on child welfare caseworkers
> 	by rbarth@email.unc.edu (Rick Barth)
>  11) RE: severity rating
> 	by "PFONNER, LINDA" <14D691@dfa.state.ny.us>
>  12) RE: Stress and mental health of child welfare caseworkers and 
> 	by "SusanDougherty" <susan.dougherty@sc.edu>
>  13) RE: emotional abuse versus emotional neglect
> 	by "Carryl P. Navalta, Ph.D." <cnavalta@mclean.harvard.edu>
>  14) RE: McMartin case facts
> 	by Lisa Amaya-Jackson <laj@acpub.duke.edu>
>  15) RE: McMartin case facts
> 	by "Niki Delson" <niki@delko.net>
>  16) Re: McMartin case facts
> 	by "Patricia Sherman" <pasherman@worldnet.att.net>
>  17) Re: McMartin case facts
> 	by John M Price PhD <jmprice@calweb.com>
>  18) RE: McMartin case facts
> 	by John M Price PhD <jmprice@calweb.com>
>  19) AFAIK
> 	by "J. Randall Webber" <rwebber@chestnut.org>
>  20) RE: ommission vs commission
> 	by Trisha Leahy <LeahyT@ausport.gov.au>
>  21) RE: info on child welfare caseworkers
> 	by "Moore, Terry D" <terrym@ukans.edu>
>  22) RE: emotional abuse versus emotional neglect
> 	by Trisha Leahy <LeahyT@ausport.gov.au>
>  23) Re: AFAIK
> 	by John M Price PhD <jmprice@calweb.com>
>  24) Re: info on child welfare caseworkers
> 	by Eric <eric@acwa.asn.au>
>  25) RE: foster care consent for research
> 	by Kim Murphy <KimM@AmericanHumane.org>
>  26) RE: Poverty and Brain Development
> 	by Kim Murphy <KimM@AmericanHumane.org>
>