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| Debbi Ashby |
Debbi Ashby (LMFT) is a Behavioral Wellness mental health practitioner on the CalWORKs Resource Support Team (RST) in Santa Maria. Below, she shares a story of a client, Susana, that CalWORKs / Welfare to Work (WTW) and Child Welfare Services (CWS) had in common. Our county has had a successful Linkages program in place for many years where the goal is to work collaboratively across these programs to serve the family and maximize resources for the family. This story illustrates the success we can achieve when we work together versus in silos. The client/family truly sees all the professionals involved as a team of helpers this way.
Read on for Susana's inspiring story! Note: To protect client privacy, identifying details have been redacted in [brackets], and the name "Susana" is a pseudonym.
by Debbi Ashby
My
client’s Linkages case began with her children being detained by CWS in December 2019
for failure to protect. My client,
Susana, was shocked, as she couldn’t understand why her kids had to be detained.
The case was based on the domestic violence in the home, which according to my
client, consisted largely of verbal abuse, threats, and manipulation from her severely
alcoholic ex-spouse. She reported minimal physical abuse with no significant
harm (no bruises, hospital trips, etc). There was no physical abuse of the children
according to CWS, but they were concerned that the children were subjected to verbal fights and the
father’s alcoholic behavior.
Susana felt stuck, overwhelmed, and helpless in
the relationship. She had given her spouse multiple chances over years to get sober
and stop his manipulative, threatening behavior. It was difficult for her to finally
give up hope, but with ongoing encouragement from different sources and regular
therapy, she was finally able to let go and stop the cycle of enabling him.
First challenge: limited contact with the baby
After the children were detained, Susana appealed
to her CWS worker at the time to be able to see her baby daily to continue
breastfeeding him. Although she had the right to do so, the visitation schedule
didn’t change. She was forced to give up
breastfeeding since two visits a week wasn’t enough to keep up her milk supply. The disruption to in-person visitation
due to new pandemic driven restrictions in March was devastating to all of my
Linkages clients until they were able to resume in-person visits.
Second challenge: finding safe housing
It was difficult for Susana to leave the home she shared
with her ex because she had no alternative residence to go to. She couldn't rent an apartment on her own because she didn’t
earn enough from her full-time job; she couldn't live with her parents because they were the foster parents; and she could only stay on a very short-term basis with other people in her support system. So she couch-surfed,
slept in her car, and/or stayed in the home, trying to avoid her ex as much as
possible in the face of his ongoing threats, harassment, and manipulation.
DSS offers several programs that can be helpful to someone like Susana. The Housing Support Program (HSP) can help homeless
CalWORKs clients secure permanent housing, by providing assistance such as paying for initial rent/deposit, furniture, or short-term hotel vouchers. The Family Advocacy Services (FAS) program can help WTW families in crisis to overcome a wide variety of barriers to employment, including helping homeless families secure adequate housing. (The EW determines client eligibility, and the CES completes the referral to one of the two HSP/FAS CES workers). And under the Family Unification Program (FUP), CWS receives funding for low-income housing vouchers for clients close to having their cases closed.
After repeated urging from the CWS worker and me, Susana began
following through with checking out various resources. She eventually stayed at the [shelter], then received HSP assistance from her
eligibility worker Estella Pollard, and eventually a FUP voucher in
July. Her CES, Philamer Tambio-Yeh, referred her to CES Jessica Ferreira for FAS assistance when Susana regained custody of her children. After extensive searching, Susana located
appropriate low-income housing, with security deposit and first month’s rent paid for by the Housing First program with Domestic Violence
Solutions.
Susana had a setback emotionally after a
disastrous Child Family Team (CFT) Zoom meeting where the father, drunk and belligerent, held the meeting
hostage and traumatized the client until he angrily left the meeting. The
consensus was that for future CFTs, a parent behaving that way should be muted
and blocked from the meeting so it can proceed more effectively. Further on, some
information Susana received and was counting on was inaccurate and incomplete, which
ended up being emotionally distressing for her.
Role of the RST
The Resource Support Team (RST) is a collaboration between the Department of Behavioral Wellness and DSS to help CalWORKs families identify and overcome barriers to employment activities through supportive services such as mental health assessment, counseling by licensed clinicians, care coordination with substance use disorder treatment providers and CWS, crisis intervention, community resource referrals, and so on. RST is comprised of licensed mental health providers (one each for North, Mid, and South County regions), as well as an AOP, Project Manager, and Alcohol & Drug Specialist.
Success!
The collaboration among the Linkages and RST teams was ultimately effective in
helping Susana get “unstuck,” begin to assert herself, and set the necessary
boundaries with her ex and her family. Her CWS worker and I strongly advocated
for Susana regaining immediate custody at a family court disposition court hearing even though
some of the other parties were against that. The CWS worker and the client’s attorney
found that the detailed RST report and the client’s
accomplishment of case plan goals were helpful in formalizing the recommendation that Susana
regain immediate custody of her children. Although that didn’t happen at that
court hearing, Susana did regain custody of her children a few weeks later, after she moved into her roomy independent living housing with her children. She and her children are happy and moving
forward as a family.
Final assessment
Being mindful of the time constraints we all face, some lessons can be drawn:
- Regular communication is vital to a successful outcome for the parent(s) and children. This includes communication (with client consent) between RST staff, EW/CES’s, and CWS workers, as well as the client’s attorney (with client consent and attorney availability).
- It is helpful to ensure that clients have received a copy of the recommendation report before their court hearings.
- From RST’s perspective, ongoing counseling, and continuing to focus on the strengths and achievements of the parent(s) so they can parent safely and appropriately, contribute to minimizing the trauma experienced by the children and the family as a whole.