Montini: Why I call DCS caseworkers heroes, and so should you

I am not in the “benefit of the doubt” business. Just the opposite. If you screw up – particularly if you work for the government – we come after you. That’s almost always a good thing, particularly in regard to children.

Yet here I am calling Department of Child Safety caseworkers … heroes.

And so should you.

DCS (which used to be called Child Protective Services) is an agency that has had lots of problems, and many failures. The kind of failures that lead to tragedies. The Arizona Republic for years has been dedicated to keeping watch on DCS and all others involved in the child-welfare system. Journalists like Mary Jo Pitzl and columnists Laurie Roberts and Karina Bland have reported with sad regularity on the problems, missteps and horrors. Now the paper has embarked on an even bigger investigative initiative.

And I’m calling caseworkers heroes?

Yes.

Case in point: Bucky's story

For me, it goes back to the late 1970s when I was (for a brief period of time) a probation officer.

The newspaper where I worked on the East Coast ran an article saying the state department of juvenile corrections was looking for volunteers to ease the caseload for probation officers. Participants would go through a series of training sessions then be assigned to a single juvenile offender for whom they would provide “intense probation,” which included weekly visits and reports to the department.

I signed up.

My “client” was a boy of 12 who went by the name of Bucky. About a year before I met him, Bucky walked down the main street of the small town where he lived and threw rocks through the plate glass windows of several stores.

I was to keep him on the up and up, make sure he followed the provisions of his probation and NOT get close to him. I was his probation officer, not his big brother.

Bucky lived in a cramped tumbledown apartment in a dicey part of town with his mother and older sister. Each time I visited him – each time – his mother showed up at the door half-dressed. A nightgown one week. An open bathrobe the next.

“Oh my,” she’d say, “Is this the time you were supposed to pick him up?”

Always a struggle, always menacing

The older sister was usually stretched out on the rickety couch in their living room, smoking cigarettes, watching television, often with a beer in her hand.

“Maybe I should get arrested so you’d come to see me?” she told me once.

“You’ve been arrested,” her mother said.

“Not by him.”

Bucky was mortified by them.

On one visit a big burly guy answered the door – his sister’s latest boyfriend. He told me Bucky wasn’t coming with me that day. He said Bucky’s mother was angry with him and wasn’t going to let him go. I explained to the man that this wasn’t a play date but a probation visit required by the court.

The guy stared down at me and said, “What? You gonna arrest me little man?”

It was like that for much of the probationary period. Always a struggle. Always vaguely menacing (and sometimes more so.)

Now, imagine 20 Buckys under your care

And Bucky had to live there. He was stuck there. No wonder the kid threw rocks at windows.

He made it through probation. He was a smart boy, but he appeared to have no real chance in life.

The state said a probation officer must cut ties after a juvenile offender completed his court-ordered requirements. I couldn’t quite do that. I checked in on Bucky. Gave him my number. I only lost touch after I’d moved to another state. I tried to call his apartment but the phone had been disconnected.

All these years later I find myself wondering about him. I wonder if I could have done more for him. It still troubles me.

And he was one case.

Imagine if you are a DCS caseworker in Arizona and you have 15, 20 or 30 cases like that. Month after month. Year after year. Imagine having to make life-and-death decisions about a child's welfare or a family's future. Imagine the houses you’d have to walk into. Imagine the people who might confront you.

Imagine that none of your successes is every publicized while any one of your failures – which might cost a life -- could wind up on the front page of the newspaper.

Imagine the responsibility. Imagine the pressure.

Now imagine doing all that for about $35,000 a year.

So, yes, I call DCS caseworkers heroes. You can imagine why.