The problem I always had with social work - although I readily admit that it is needed in some cases in society - was that terms like "intervention" could be negatively interpreted as "butting in".
I think that in a case in which children are being beaten (I mean ... really beaten), for instance, the state should intervene. But this has been extended to so much more, and so much more nonsense.
And when I read cases like the ones in Florida in which the case worker simply forged her travel sheets - claiming to visit families she never did - and a little girl turned up dead - I wonder about the level of competency in those organizations.
I agree--I have no problem with child protective services intervening in very severe cases. What is always beyong me, however, is how these severe beating/starving cases seem to get ignored, whereas the second you tell a supervisor that someone is spanking their child or left them home alone for 20 minutes, the call is made faster than you can say your own name.
I really don't get how leaving a 8-10 year old child home alone for a very short period of time is now considered neglect. If that had been true in the '80's, my parents would be in jail and I'd be a foster child. They used to leave me home voluntarily because I wanted to stay home and watch TV instead of coming with them to pick up my sister at basketball practice. They taught me all emergency numbers to call, what not to touch, and how to handle it if the doorbell rings, among other things. These things used to be taught universally. Now I hear about children that age who are left in an apartment alone for like half an hour while Mom gets milk across the street, and CPS is called. At my last internship, they threatened to call CPS because a mom left her baby on the bed in her room for about 30 seconds while a neighbor across the halll handed her something. WTF?
