11-13-2005, 10:59 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 43
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The first foster care/adoption agency I worked for attempted to start their own version of "Children's Services Practice Notes" by requiring social workers to keep detailed documentation of their weekly experiences with children and families in the form of journals, letters, notes and whatever other medium was comfortable for each individual. These journals were also supposed to be a tool for them to share the connections they were making between weekly training classes and the work they were doing in the field. The intent originally was to have this posted weekly for the rest of the staff to learn about other areas of the agency, including fellow social workers but also and especially those in other fields that were not privvy to much of the "hands-on" work but confined to fundraising offices and event planning as well as other administrative staff. Unforunately, the social workers often would let this activity slip away each week, and were not particularly encouraged by those that set it up to continue the process. I think they found it to be more of a chore than a valuable experience that would inform their own work and the higher functioning of the entire agency. I was saddened by the lack of morale among employees, and while I totally understand how overwhelming it is to not only work with the challenges of families and children on a daily basis, many hours each week, but also try to make sense of it at the end of a long and difficult time, I still think it's a great idea, and one that should be attempted within all types of agencies, regardless of how frequently the notes are published, shared and written in the first place.
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