Navigating the child welfare system in Los Angeles County can be difficult – and that’s putting it lightly. Not only do families have to meet certain benchmarks, but they have to do so by figuring out where and how best to receive certain social services, much on their own.

For the social workers helping these families, the process can be just as tough. Unless a social worker has had experience on both the government and community agency sides, fully understanding what these people go through is unlikely.

Enter a new program headed by the USC School of Social Work for the University Consortium for Children and Families (UCCF), a federally funded program and partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and six Master of Social Work programs in Los Angeles, including USC’s. Formerly known as the Inter-University Consortium, UCCF requires that each of its member schools develop its own initiative, and the USC School of Social Work recently completed a year-long pilot program that sent its student interns to work not only at DCFS but also to gain clinical skills at SHIELDS for Families, which provides a range of social services in South Los Angeles.

“We looked at how we could enhance internships that would better prepare students for one of the most difficult jobs in social work, or one of the most difficult jobs – period,” said Jacquelyn McCroskey, the John Milner Professor of Child Welfare at the USC School of Social Work who helped design the new program. “It’s one thing to say you’ve learned something in school, but it’s another when you’re thrown into a real job.”

MSW students who are dedicated to pursuing a career in public child welfare and are accepted into the UCCF program are given a stipend of $18,500. Upon graduation, they are required to complete at least one year of full-time paid employment with DCFS. And now that this internship includes cross-training at a community-based agency, these students will enter their first year as professional social workers with a unique perspective that touches multiple facets of the child welfare system.

“Now, more than ever, it is paramount that we address anything and everything that we possibly can to improve the lives of children, especially those most vulnerable who are a part of the child welfare system,” said Marilyn Flynn, dean of the USC School of Social Work, chair of the board of UCCF and a member of the Los Angeles County Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Protection. “Training social work students in new, innovative ways allows for us to think outside the box, something we hope will have a positive effect on the lives of children and families.”

Dual purposes

 

As part of this special field placement experience, students spend one day per week at both DCFS and SHIELDS, working with different clients at each location. On the government side, students learn how to help families from a legal standpoint, and on the community-based agency side, they learn how to engage families on a more emotional level.

 

“There’s now a huge emphasis on monitoring and data with the goal of having social workers be effective at DCFS and remain in their jobs,” said Omar Lopez, clinical associate professor of field education at the USC School of Social Work and field coordinator for the school’s UCCF program. “UCCF is trying to enhance collaboration and bring resources together. It’s about building relationships so these future social workers can effectively function in what is accepted to be a chaotic situation and use critical thinking skills to be able to work with families in the best way possible.

“We have not heard of another school of social work in the country doing a field placement like this.”

Evangelina Reina, assistant regional administrator for DCFS in its Compton, California, office where USC MSW students performed their internships, recognized the need to adapt to the needs of families, as well as students, in today’s society. With the proliferation of technology and increasing complexity of family issues, simply sending a client to a parenting class isn’t going to cut it.

“Child welfare, in general, involves dealing with constant changes about how to best serve clients and in doing so how to best prepare social workers to do this work,” said Reina, who received an MSW from the USC School of Social Work in 2003 and is currently an adjunct lecturer there, in addition to her work with DCFS. “In any child welfare agency, we should take risks and innovate to achieve this. We have to be willing to do things differently.”

To that end, Reina believes that by being more aware of the communities they serve, MSW students will be better DCFS social workers in providing services to these vulnerable families and children.

“This training will help them understand that the heart of a family is in the community. Now, not only do we tell families that SHIELDS exists, but we also have social workers who know that the agencies can help families in certain ways,” Reina said. “Having students experience that – playing the therapist – will give them empathy. We as a department alone can’t possibly help a family as well as give them integrated community services, so having that feeling of a service provider from an experiential perspective is very helpful.”

A deeper understanding

 

Britney Courtright, who participated in the UCCF program before she graduated in May, agrees that this dual experience gave her a broader perspective on not only how families experience the child welfare system but also how DCFS and a community-based agency work with their clients.

 

“I have more empathy for these families now because I’ve seen them go through so much,” said Courtright, who now works at the Wateridge regional DCFS office near Inglewood, California. “At DCFS, they have to go to counseling, parenting classes, drug testing – there’s a lot on their plate. And if they’re suffering from depression or a mental health condition, that’s going to make it more difficult for them. By having clinical training, I’ll be able to see that and be more supportive.”

During her time in the UCCF program, Courtright had an experience that made her recognize just how important this more holistic perspective is for families in the system. While working with a family at SHIELDS, she saw how its members had started to revert back to their old ways once they began to lose the services DCFS had provided for a time.

“I saw that they might have to go back to DCFS,” she said. “As a social worker at DCFS, you have to really consider what you can possibly do to give them the best chances at success, thinking ahead for the family’s sake so they don’t re-enter the system.”

Courtright emphasized the usefulness of the UCCF training program in real-life decision-making.

“It can be easy to put in the back of your mind what you did [in field placement] the year before, so having a dual placement – one day therapy, the next investigative – you’ll remember better what you learned and actively apply it right there. And to do that while you’re in school is really valuable. It’s just like taking classes at the same time: something learned in one class can help in another,” she said.

Kimberly Medvin, MSW ’99, oversees social work interns at SHIELDS. She said she noticed that the training started to come together for the MSW students during their second semester in the UCCF program when it became clear that they were starting to look at cases very differently.

“To have clinical social workers trained to understand the psychosocial stressors and mental health issues that plague our community’s population, and what our clients go through when working with DCFS workers, is the greater good in this,” she said. “Students who are trained in that partnership and collaborative approach can think through things with a better clinical lens. In the end, [the UCCF program] benefits our clients and our staff so we can have a more unified approach for our cases.”

Building the future

 

To ensure the development of the best possible program, Lopez, Reina, Medvin and Courtright, as well as Megan Healy, another MSW student who participated in the program, gave a presentation on the UCCF program at the Title IV-E National Roundtable Conference in Galveston, Texas, in May. They discussed their experiences from different perspectives.

 

“Part of our program model is to build relationships among institutions and a sense of collaboration,” Lopez said. “Not only were students learning about DCFS, but also administration and field supervisors were learning what each other does. The light bulbs were going off – they were saying, ‘Now we understand why this is so different, why they deal with families the way they do.’ It was a learning experience for all parties involved. The goal is to return next year with more than one semester’s worth of data.”

The UCCF pilot program has been renewed for another year, and a second cohort of students will start this fall. Lopez said the goal with this program is to expand it to other community-based agencies throughout Los Angeles County and eventually the entire United States.