Whistle Blower #11

    The training itself was very interesting particularly the parts where mothers struggled to get physical control over their children. By this I mean that the mother would move like an anaconda, wrapping the acting-out child up with her limbs until the child could no longer move. Of course, the mother didn't crush the child though there was usually plenty of screaming going on by the child that would make you think she was. Obviously, this wouldn't work on older children. Even so, it took some mothers a long time to wrest complete control. As she did this, the therapist gave the mother encouragement plus there was a therapist looking in on this rather primal scene through a one-way mirror. She would actually make phone calls into the therapy room to advise the first therapist. All this was highly dramatic, and the mother and child would be completely exhausted.
    However, the idea that this therapy could be duplicated in public social services agencies was ridiculous unless it was widely supported by State welfare. Even so, the associations for licensed social workers and psychologists would object very strongly to people with only undergraduate degrees in say, government, giving therapy. In addition, State welfare was running social workers by a computer program that gave them only a few hours each month to work with their foster care cases and their child abuse/neglect cases. It was already a ridiculous amount of time without adding in the social worker and a second social worker doing family counseling. All I had to do was show the consequences - two dead people [guess what? fetuses are people for you who are in la-la land.], and there would be hell to pay. And Betty Copland, Director of York County Social Services, knew it. Peter Nickerson, MS,MSW. Director of Williamsburg Social Services for eight years, 352-359-0850.