TRACKING PROGRESS AND TERMINATING Tracking Progress

Once relationships have been established among the various professionals involved in a case, the process of keeping abreast of developments becomes easier. Ideally, the case conference establishes clear areas of responsibility, so that each member of the “team” knows his or her focus of duty, and no one person feels overburdened by attempting to work alone with all the various facets of the case. In the case of the Smiths, the school social worker might have become the case manager, with the understanding that new developments and the concerns of other agencies could be funneled through him or her. This might appear to be a major responsibility in and of itself, but if others shared the tasks of helping Mrs. Smith find permanent housing, job training, addiction counseling, and mental health counseling, then the school social worker would have been freed from becoming involved personally in each of these tasks. The school, after all, was the primary contact point for the child, and the other agencies (probation, social services, housing, mental health, etc.) could share the responsibility of trying to rehabilitate the Smiths and help point them toward a more productive life.
Of course, the danger of having so many different people involved with the Smiths would have been that the family could have become scattered and frustrated because of having too many people to relate to. They also might confuse the appropriate functions of each unless they were given direct guidance. Each professional would need to be clear in communicating his or her specific helping role to the family. Case review conferences should be held periodically to track the progress of each case. The timing of such reviews should be determined during the original conference. Because of the rapidly changing elements in the Smith case, a plan for a review in 6 months might have been impractical, although in other case situations this is a reasonable period of time. Probably a once-a-month review would have been appropriate for this family. The Smith family found Section 8 housing after Barbie had been at First Place School only 2 months. They moved, her records were transferred to a regular public school, and the case management role of the special school ceased to exist. In retrospect, a plan to confer with the social worker in the new school and a fallback plan to prevent the family’s becoming “lost” would have helped keep both the helpers and this family on track. Termination The concept of termination is not applicable in dealing with young children whose development is in flux or with families that have serious and ongoing problems. What happens is that some families drop out of sight for a while and later come to the attention of other agencies, which may be unaware of previous efforts to help the family. The word “termination” assumes that the difficulties presented at intake have been resolved and that there will be no further contacts. It certainly cannot guarantee that similar or different problems will not resurface later. It is quite likely that a child who shows sufficient difficulties to come to the attention of a school social worker in third grade will again present problems in middle school, when physiological development creates stresses that make many youth less able to cope. The fact that a child has a confidential record related to the earlier difficulties may assist the counselor or social worker who meets this child for the first time at age 12. In my opinion, the availability of records offers great aid to professionals who enter a case after much work has already been done but about which the parent(s) may give an incomplete report. UPDATE ON THE SMITH FAMILY: 1995; BARBIE, AGE 13 The following summary of what happened to the Smiths after the end of the No Place Like Home videotape (Hunt, 1992) is based on information from the filmmaker, Kathryn Hunt; on my telephone conversation with Mrs. Smith; and on various conversations with the First Place School personnel, who had signed releases from Mrs. Smith to share this information. The end of the video announced that Barbie had been sent a one-way ticket and that she had gone out of state to visit her father. Her mother told me that Barbie remained with her father for an extended time (almost a full school year), although the original plan had been for a summer visit only. When Barbie eventually returned to her mother, she told the filmmaker that she had not gone to school during the previous year! However, the school records do indicate an out-of-state registration. The facts about this remain unclear. During the summer following Barbie’s stay with her father, I attempted to contact the family to obtain releases for the first edition of this book. The filmmaker had prepared Mrs. Smith for my call, and Mrs. Smith had indicated her willingness to give me her permission. I spoke to Barbie and David before finally reaching Mrs. Smith. My conversation with her took place the night before they were to be evicted from the apartment in which they had lived for more than a year following Barbie’s transfer out of the special school program. Mrs. Smith gave me permission over the phone and indicated her willingness to sign releases, which I said I would send to Kathryn Hunt. Following their eviction, it took 4 months for the personnel at the school and Ms. Hunt to locate the family. During this time, Mrs. Smith evidently had some trouble with the law and was imprisoned again briefly (I do not know any details). Because I continued to press the school to locate the family, they eventually did so, through the department of social services. I had assumed that if the Smiths were still in the same state, they would be receiving public assistance. The fact that Barbie was not enrolled in school (which had been verified) constituted grounds to report Mrs. Smith for neglect, and this information was conveyed to her through a note to her public assistance worker. Mrs. Smith soon after reappeared at the special school program to enroll Barbie. This time Barbie remained there for a full 6-month period, during which time Mrs. Smith accepted a referral and involved herself in counseling provided by the mental health system. Barbie made considerable academic gains during this period, was tested, and was found not to have a learning disability. In other words, her serious academic delays were attributable to her irregular school attendance, rather than to any personal learning disability. At this time Barbie was eligible to continue at that school program for 1 more year, after which she would be too old. However, the availability of the special school program for Barbie was contingent upon her family’s continuing homeless status. Were she to transfer to a “regular” public middle school, it would be unlikely that there would be any special services to accommodate her special needs. Barbie’s sister, Donna, was once again living apart from Mrs. Smith and Barbie. She had had a baby and was living alone with her child, because the baby’s father was in prison. Barbie’s brother had also moved out, and his whereabouts were unknown. At the time of the 1995 update, Barbie had her own room in the motel where she resided with her mother. UPDATE ON BARBIE: 2002, AGE 18½ In connection with preparing the second edition of this book, I again contacted Kathryn Hunt to see if she had remained in touch with the Smith family during the past 6 years. She said that she had and that these contacts were reciprocal: Sometimes they would contact her, and other times she would telephone them. She gave me a brief overview and offered to call Mrs. Smith to see if she and Barbie would agree to talk with me. After Ms. Hunt notified me that the family would welcome my call, I telephoned and learned that Barbie had recently moved out of state with her boyfriend. Her mother expected to hear from her, and she said that she would pass along my message and ask Barbie if she could give me her telephone number. At the time the second edition was published, I had spoken with Barbie twice, once soon after her move, when she was living temporarily with her boyfriend’s cousins, and several months later, after the couple had moved to live with the boyfriend’s parents. During this time the couple had married and were looking forward to the birth of a baby in a few months. The summary below was reviewed and approved by Barbie and her husband, whom I call Mike. Barbie told me that Mike was not comfortable with giving details about his baby for this book, and therefore I mainly focused on summarizing Barbie’s life during the years of her adolescence. After the previous update, when Barbie had returned to live with her mother and was attending First Place School again, the pattern of family instability and frequent changes of residence continued because of her mother’s ongoing drug involvement and other periods of imprisonment. Barbie lived for a while with her sister in California, then for another period with her father in the Southwest. Some of this time was relatively stable for Barbie; she attended school and reconciled with her father. He had remarried, had a baby, and was not involved with drugs for about 6 years. In telling me about her father and this period, Barbie said, “Dad gave me rules about what I could and couldn’t do. I realized that he loved me. I got to know him and I forgave him. He was kind to me and even let me call my mom from his house.” Unfortunately, his ability to remain drug-free did not last, and he returned to prison. Barbie admitted that she also had been involved with drugs for about 9 years but stated that she had been clean for the last 2½ years. I thought that this could not be an accurate memory, because if she had been drugfree since she was 16, that would mean that she had begun experimenting when she was 7! I asked for clarification, and Barbie said that it was, in fact, true. She credited her husband with helping her get off drugs. Now her only addiction was cigarette smoking. I asked Barbie whether she remembered her experiences in foster care when she was little, and she said that she did, mentioning the names of her foster parents. When I questioned her about the counseling that her mother had mentioned to the school social worker, Barbie reported that the counselor had told her that everything she said would be confidential but that the counselor then repeated what Barbie had said to her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Barbie felt very betrayed by this, and I explained that counselors are obligated to report it if they believe that a child is being abused. I wasn’t sure if this was the case in this situation. Barbie felt that it was wrong for the counselor to tell her that she could trust her, then later to betray this trust. I also asked if Barbie remembered the First Place School, and she referred to the school social worker there by name. When I inquired whether she had been there long enough to make any friends, she recalled a Chinese boy and walking to the park to go swimming with her school class once a week. Barbie was one credit short of being able to graduate with her class in Arizona, but she later obtained her GED. When she returned to live with her mother, she held different jobs in fast-food restaurants and in stores. She met her future husband when she was 16, and she said, “He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” At another point in the conversation, she said that she was happier now than she had ever been in her life. Barbie maintained weekly telephone contact with both her sister and her mother. She confirmed that she had never had any contact with grandparents or other relatives. However, she appeared to be making a new life for herself in a new part of the country where she was involved with her husband’s family. She was looking forward to the baby’s birth.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS Contracting assumes that a client has the motivation and ability to follow through with an agreed-upon plan. Sometimes a plan that seems logical and feasible on one day can become invalid when the client’s circumstances change and the plan becomes unworkable. Therefore, the time frame of contracts with multiproblem clients and families should be short, and there should be frequent monitoring and revisions of goals, where appropriate. The case of Barbie Smith graphically illustrates the impact of homelessness on school attendance and child development. This population of children clearly requires special services such as those described here. However, the lack of follow-up after a family obtains housing and a child leaves the program can have serious consequences if the child goes for protracted periods of time without schooling. This situation needs more careful monitoring by public assistance programs that provide financial support to families. Computerization should permit tracking of homeless children’s school attendance to ensure that such children do not fall between the cracks. This case is unusual because of the follow-ups over the course of 15 years. One of the usual characteristics of social work practice is that practitioners may never know the outcome in the lives of most of the children they have served. We must take some comfort in the belief that we provided the best service possible during the time we were involved, and that families will be more inclined to find other help when they have had a positive experience with social workers in the past.