Well, it finally happened. All that talking eventually amounted to full-time internship that began just over two weeks ago. I have now taken baby steps into the real world! And all my unanswered questions have been answered.
So what do I do you ask? Well let me tell you. I am a PPS intern (Protection and Prevention Services) which is a branch of the DCF (Department for Children and Families). PPS encompasses many things including: APS (adult protective services), foster care and adoption services, independent living services, and CPS (child protective services) which is what I do. (I hope you are all memorizing these acronyms cause I might start talking in them all the time now...or so I have been told)
But what does that mean? I know I have given brief over views of what CPS really is based on my own limited knowledge, but now I can tell you even more! So here is what happens BEFORE CPS gets involved: first you call in a report that you suspect a child is being abused or neglected. You talk to someone about your suspicions and all the events that led you to call today. Then that report gets sent to a social worker who does a brief review of the report and maybe gathers some additional information. That person decides whether or not the things in the report meet the baseline for something that is considered abuse. They then assign it as a specific type of abuse (which can be physical abuse, neglect, medical neglect, lack of supervision, sexual abuse, and a couple more) and assign it to a CPS social worker. And that is where we come in. We take that report and then we investigate it. We talk to the kids, the parents, and any other involved parties (maybe teachers, doctors, grandparents, etc.) We do assessments to determine if the child is safe or not and decide whether that child might need to be removed or if services need to be added. Services can include counseling, intensive in-home therapy, monetary help with bills, and many more. Now here is a common misconception: CPS does not remove the child. This surprised me too. CPS has no legal authority to take custody of the child. We either call the police and the police deem it necessary to put the child into police protective custody (PPC) or we gather all our evidence, take it to the county attorney, who takes it to a judge, and then the judge decides whether or not custody is necessary. Our goal is always to strengthen families and keep them together, but unfortunately that is not always possible.
So now you know what CPS is, but what exactly do I, as an intern, get to do. Well at the moment I do a lot of shadowing of the other CPS workers. When we get a report we generally have make (or attempt) contact either within 24 hours or 72 hours depending on how it was assigned. So I go out with them to make that first contact. I have sat in on several first contact with kids. Usually this happens in schools so that it is a neutral environment. It is also done because we do not need permission from parents to talk to their kids (to ensure they don't tell their child what to say or what not to say) so we can show up at school, identify ourselves (though in small town Kansas it seems CPS workers are known to schools), and talk to the child. I have also sat in on several parent interviews. Most of the ones I have observed have either been follow-up interviews or interviews where the parents were not the alleged perpetrator. But they have still been really interesting.
Okay, I have so much more to say but in the interest of keeping this brief (as if you could call this brief) I am going to stop now and save the rest for a future post. I feel like I have learned so much and I want to learn so much more and do and learn everything there is. I will share some of my future adventures with you soon!
