Just wanted to share this. Back when Josh Powell killed his boys, I posted something criticizing the entire child visitation system and the idiocy of the social workers that run them. Was glad to finally see this in the paper today. Such a tragedy of incompetence.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/apnewsbreak-social-workers-faulted-boys-deaths-16913608#.UBqyAfXgZbI

I'd like to hear the whole flawed justice system say "mea culpa" instead of throwing the lowest man or woman under the bus and dusting their hands of the case.

Yes, I was just reading an excellent blog from Prometheus, "Victim's guide to bureaucracy". This was Point 6.

It is here for anyone interested - there are many parallels to CoJCoLDS so not totally OT:
http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=254#more-254

ummmmmmmmm


I think it was Josh Powell who gets the Blame.

just sayin'

Social workers are always over-worked and under-paid. I do not know the specifics of this case and don't want to. It is too horrible and there is a reason I don't work CPS, but trust me when I say that social workers truly have their clients' best interest at heart and if we could, we would do more. Budgets, staffing and laws are more to blame for the lack of action than social workers who are incompetent or lazy.

MSW



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2012 07:18PM by Samantha Baker.

Agreed. The only one to blame is Powell himself.

You are so right.

But social workers or whoever does the "supervising" set the rules of what it means to supervise. It's left to their discretion.

I can't tell you the number of times as an attorney I have had a parent whose asked for a court order of supervised visitation of the other parent only to find that the "supervisors" treat the suspect parent as if they can be trusted or just need to be watched. I have had supervisors tell me that the parent would never do anything because they're being watched as if the fact the supervisor can report what he does is a deterrent to violence. Or they say the parent won't say anything inappropriate to the child because it will be heard. Even though parents are only ordered to be supervised if they present an actual risk to children. So it is inherent in the situation that the parent is more than inappropriate but potentially dangerous to the child.

I've had them supervise alone in the home, where a truly dangerous person could simply overwhelm the usually female supervisor and do whatever else he wants to the children. Which is exactly what Josh Powell did. This is why they are at fault. The social worker in this case was an older woman in her 60s who could have done nothing to stop Powell. It was an illusion that the supervision was protective in any way shape or form.

But the whole family law system is a mess. It's more illusion than real help to either children or parents.

Why the hell aren't we hiring more explosion-proof social workers?

If you can't protect children from something as simple as that, the blood is on YOUR hands.

So then why are you blaming the social worker?

The social worker gets all the damning if they do what that one did, or all the damning if they decide not to let Josh Powell take his kids that day. Either way it hits the news and 20/20 armchair quarterbacks like you sit there and say "I told you so!"

B.F.D.

Your condemnation of the lowest person on the totem pole makes you part of the problem.

nope, the judge that allowed him any custody will burn in hell can't blame the workers, blame the judge, their blood is on the judges hands

Blame the prophet....not in tune that day. God wanted to tell him, but he was worried about his milk being the right temperature.
TSM is to blame, not Josh of course, not the social workers, not the dead X wife (where the hell was she?_), not the attorney, or the judge cause they never do anything wrong except create all that's wrong with our society. (99% of all attorney's give the rest a bad name.)
Don't blame budgets, or politicians they always work for their constituents, and never for themselves.

Burn in hell for pushing Josh to kill his own kids. Let's blame everyone except him. He was treated unfairly by the world, killed his wife, and kids. Not his fault.

Really?????????????

when his wife went missing? THIS IS THAT GUY? HE KILLED HIS CHILDREN?

This is one fucked up world.

I'm taking to my bed.

I agree with abo - the social workers had to comply with the judge's orders. The judge should have been made aware of all the other issues and if he/she was not then that is another lapse.

I don't blame the social worker. What could she have done?

Josh Powell was a sick, evil person, clearly capable of anything. I think the social worker did the best she could under the circumstances.

I am myself an MSW, though I don't currently practice. Ten years ago, I was offered a job in Washington, DC working for CPS. I ended up turning it down because I realized that working for CPS requires a certain kind of person; and I know that I am not that kind of person. No one sees child welfare workers as heroes. They are either in trouble for "breaking up families" or people are upset because child abuse goes undetected and kids stay in abusive homes.

Most kids don't want to leave their parents, even if they're abusive. No parent wants to be interviewed by a social worker employed by CPS. The general public may understand the need for child welfare workers, but it's not necessarily a job that people grow up wanting to do. It doesn't pay well; it's high stress; and no one appreciates what you do. So it takes a certain kind of person to be able to do that kind of work for any length of time.

I agree that the family court system is way FUBAR, though.

I tend towards not blaming anyone but Josh Powell.

Most of the Social Workers I know are very intelligent people doing a tough job, that do the best they can in a very difficult environment. The biggest problem CPS has is that it is a bureaucracy, and as such the field agents tend to get tied down in paper work and red tape. Part of this is good, as you don't want the taking of a child from a home to be an easy thing, part of it is bad, if the agent ends up doing hours of paper work for every five minutes of investigation. Often reports documenting very real problems can get buried in mountains of cases were an ex spouse is making unfounded claims against another as part of some game.

Another problem, is that while the agency is mostly good, it is short staffed, and that problem employees never seem to go away. This is not too unusual from most Civil Services ran organizations, but ironically the civil service was started to prevent the retention of bad employees and the hiring and firing based on politics. Since both problems are still major issues...well that gets into politics and this isn't the thread for that.

I have worked with a number of social workers in my capacity as a teacher. I have always found them to be highly professional, motivated, and hard working. They do the best they can with caseloads that can be nothing short of ridiculous.

Working for CPS is especially tough, and many CPS workers don't make it past a few years of employment.

Social workers have certain rules and constraints that they must work within just like any other job. They are not miracle workers.

I wasn't blaming the social workers for being social workers. I'm blaming them for being "supervisors" of high risk visitation.

The difference is that while the judge enters an order of "supervised visitation," that only means that the agencies contracted with the state or contracted privately will set the standards for safety. The workers who contracted with the state to provide safe visitation services are fully responsible if their "plan" is not providing real safety. One fact that shocked me when the 911 tape was released was that the social worker didn't even know the address. She was on the phone asking for the police but it took many minutes for her to retreive the address from a piece of paper she had left in the car. What kind of protection is that if she's not ready to call for help when she's supposed to be supervising an abusive parent and was going into the house without knowing the address or taking it with her?

Yes, the system is at fault in many ways--in great part because the court should not assume competence on the part of the supervisors. Their heart may be in the right place but that does nothing for a good outcome. The heart does not protect against violence.

I am not talking about the job of social worker. I'm talking about the job of supervising, which in some cases (not all) is filled by social worker agencies that got the state contract for the service. SOmetimes the agencies that get the contracts are not social workers and they are every bit as bad.

I guess I took your subject line, * Social Workers at Fault in Josh Powell case*, to mean that you were blaming social workers. How silly of me.


I'm just yanking your chain. I do understand what you mean. The lady was out motivated, outmaneuvered, and out planned. She would have needed a Kevlar vest and a weapons permit to have properly dealt with the murderer.

"Social Workers at Fault in Josh Powell case" and "[...] the idiocy of the social workers [...]"

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,589165,589165#msg-589165

Which sounds like you're blaming the social workers for being, well, social workers. Make up your mind.

And since when did social workers or their supervisors assume the mantle of Mind Reader and can, unlike you, me, and everyone else, what MIGHT happen five minutes from now?

"I can't tell you the number of times as an attorney [...]"
"I have had supervisors tell me [...]"

Then isn't it part of YOUR job to communicate the seriousness of these charges to supervisors and social workers? Then isn't it part of YOUR job to impress upon supervisors and social workers the great potential for danger in these situations?

If you're so calm, cool, level-headed, collected, and PRESCIENT in those situations, why don't you do the job? Or, as an attorney, is it just easier for you to do this:
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/harvepino/harvepino1201/harvepino120100038/11868653-signpost-sending-you-to-every-direction.jpg

If the government were to try to prevent all harm that any parent could possibly do to their children even in the case where the parent appears to be a nutcase.

Can you imagine:

1) The cost?
2) The police big brother state that would have to exist?

It's easy to blame someone in hindsight, but there is no reasonable way to expect this to have been prevented. To deny the rights of a parent who has not been formally charged of anything to see their children doesn't work realistically. To send an entire SWAT team to every visit is equally unrealistic.

So the agency was at fault, not necessarily the social worker. I will admit that I don't know who comes up with the policies at the agency tasked with supervising Josh Powell. I think it's a sure bet, though, that the policies will be changed in the wake of this case.

For the social worker who was actually there when this happened, I have nothing but empathy. What an awful thing she has to live with now.

Social workers, their supervisors, and their agencies can't save every client any more than than surgeons can save every patient or lawyers can win every case.

You are trying to hold them to a standard of success that you yourself probably can't meet. This is very typical of how our society has come to view the human service professions. It has become acceptable to pick on people who work very hard, with distressed clients, for modest sums of money.

In such a high profile case, personally, if I would have been the administrator there - know that Powell was probably a deranged killer of his own wife and UNSTABLE, I would have least sent my biggest Male worker to that situation. At most, I would have sent a team to monitor that entire situation. There are situations like this w/ HUGE probabilities of problems down the line.

Events are easier to predict after they happen.

Poor kids.

And here in the Land of Nod, KSL had to downplay Utah's failures even as damning information came out (don't watch it--just had to listen to their continuous pre-coverage ref. to panel report during Olympics last night).

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=21528709&nid=148&title=committee-deems-murder-of-powell-children-couldnt-have-been-predicted&s_cid=queue-11

"Committee deems murder[s]...couldn't have been predicted"

OLYMPIA, Wash. — A new report concludes social workers could have made more informed decisions about Josh Powell's sons had they received more information from West Valley police about the investigation into his missing wife, Susan Cox Powell.

That information could have either been shared between police and social workers in Washington or social workers could have made more of an effort to seek it out, according to the report.

However, even with additional information, the committee that issued the report determined that "nobody could have anticipated that Joshua Powell would murder his two sons."

“There wasn’t anybody who had dropped the ball or someone made a mistake or an oversight that had happened,” panel member King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Richard Anderson told the Seattle Times. “There are some people who do terrible things in life. The ‘Batman’ incident (the theater shootings in Colorado) is a perfect example. You can’t explain things like this. I think Mr. Powell had this in his mind and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it....”

...While the report from the Washington Department of Social and Health Services' Child Fatality Review Team did not directly point any fingers blaming people for Charlie and Braden Powell's deaths, it suggested that communication between social workers and police could have been better. It also suggested that social workers could improve on both seeking information from police and receiving domestic violence training.

The committee did not draw conclusions about whether any actions by social workers, police or the court could have prevented Josh Powell from killing his children and himself.

However, in a prepared statement summarizing the report, the committee found that DSHS "could have evaluated (Josh Powell) differently for domestic violence and not allowed in-home visits with the boys," and that it would have been beneficial for DSHS to have more information about the West Valley police investigation into Powell.

"Other information that could have aided DSHS and law enforcement in decision making was sealed in Utah records as law enforcement officers in that state continued to investigate the disappearance of Powell's wife.” –- fatality review committee....

[From the maternal grandparents]: "...It's what I would have expected. I think they have ignored the primary concerns and they need to give themselves a pass on some level, because I agree that no one — no normal thinking person — could understand a person as messed up as Josh was. A person who could do that to their own children. It's hard for rational people to understand irrational thoughts like that," Cox said.

"But the idea that they listened to us and they took everything and they weighed it ... we warned them. The idea that no one could foresee this happening ... We saw it happening," he said.

"We warned DHS. We warned West Valley City police. We warned Pierce County. We warned every social worker we saw. We told them this was possible. And because we're grandparents and connected and knew this situation, our concerns were dismissed —considered and dismissed."

"And obviously we were correct and they should never have been dismissed...."
[My words in brackets]

It's just so much Swiss cheese w/the waffling. "...[C]ommunication between social workers and police could have been better?" How is that possible when pertinent info was sealed by state of Utah authorities?

It really is sad when you realize the horror of the last moments of those poor boys' lives. I blame Powell, the judge, and anyone who concealed information that might have saved those boys after their mother was already gone w/o a trace.