York County trains caseworkers in a crucible

The lives of children are in their hands, but few people can withstand all that goes with being a family caseworker. Here’s how some find out if they’ve got what it takes.

(York) — The volume on the television was turned up — blaring baseball highlights. The curtains to the room were drawn and the lights turned off. Empty liquor bottles and crushed beer cans littered the kitchen counters and table.

Then, seven to eight quick knocks came at the door. 

Samantha Bobb and Christina Faye were there to get some answers. 

Over the next several minutes, the caseworkers from York County Office of Children, Youth and Families would pepper questions to a drunk father whose son was missing.

At times, the interaction turned aggressive and frightening, the man yelling at the two caseworkers and cursing.

But none of it was real.

The scenario was held not in someone’s apartment or home, but in the second-floor suite of a hotel just outside of downtown Harrisburg.

Throughout this past Thursday afternoon, Bobb, Faye and a handful of newly-hired caseworkers from York and Lebanon counties walked through similar simulations.

This type of training has been used in central Pennsylvania for the last three years, starting first in Dauphin County. 

The University of Pittsburgh recently joined the effort and has helped to expand it statewide, said Ron Frederick, the personal safety director with Service Access & Management, which offers safety training courses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The hope is to better prepare younger caseworkers for the realities of these incredibly difficult jobs that come with long hours, emotional stress and high turnover rates.

“Once you’re in it, you realize how stressful and emotionally impacting it can be on you,” said Bobb, a 23-year-old psychology major who graduated from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania last year.

She grew up in Biglerville in Adams County and is about six months into the job. She said she was told how hard her career choice would be. 

She knew, too, of the turnover rates. Her department’s administrator, Terry Clark, said in 2017 that 90 percent of the agency’s staff had left within a two-year period.

Bobb knew that York County tends to rank third in the state — usually behind Allegheny and Philadelphia counties — for the highest number of child abuse and neglect cases.

For some perspective, the agency accepted 598 referrals for assessment in March 2017 alone, the highest in that year. In 2014, the highest month was May with 295 cases.

On average, the agency has between 5 and 10 supervisor and caseworker vacancies in any given month.

“I know all this,” Bobb said after going through one of the hotel simulations, “but I can do it. I can overcome all the stress and I can do it.”

Clark hopes the simulation training, which has actors playing out real-life scenarios, will better prepare his caseworkers and, ultimately, make them more comfortable when they make home visits.

Cyndi Sindlinger has been with the York County agency for about 23 years. She has been an intake caseworker and supervisor. Years ago, she said, the department only had seven caseworkers. 

But, she clarified, they all had longevity, meaning they had been with the department for many years.

Today’s caseworkers tends to be younger, with less experience. They are faced with issues that have cropped up only in the last few years, namely the opioid epidemic and how that’s impacted families.

They spend more time filling out paperwork, an issue Clark and other state officials have recognized is a growing problem for today’s caseworker.

The training, then, becomes all the more important for these newer caseworkers, Sindlinger agreed. It exposes them to situations they may not be used to in their own childhoods.

“If you think about most of our caseworkers, this is not how they grew up,” Sindlinger said, referring to some of the home conditions a caseworker might respond to around York County. “This is not what they’re accustomed to.”

Personal safety

What Bobb found, just a few months into the job, was that she needed to take emotional, self-care breaks on certain days just to keep working.

She understands now why the turnover rate is so high.

All of this meant that Thursday’s training was so much more important. It offered her a window into real-life situations with families and helped her better learn how to talk with families.

It also taught her and her co-workers about how to protect themselves. 

If you were to boil down the training, it was all about how the caseworkers can keep themselves safe while going out on home visits, said Josh Reager, a police officer involved in the training who was debriefing two Lebanon County caseworkers after a simulation.

“It’s OK for you to be worried about your own safety,” Reager said.

This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The York Daily Record.