What would have motivated the group home social worker in Chicago to take the boy to the ice cream store? What was it like for the young group home resident to be treated to an ice cream cone by his social worker? Does a kid's walk to the ice cream store become something more than just that because he was accompanied by his social worker?
A recent article about the NYPD's highest ranking female chief, Joanne Jaffe, and her close personal involvement with the sole survivor of a murdered family brought to mind what this social worker's wife told me many years ago. Francine Derrick, another social worker formerly of Chicago and now a resident of McHenry, Illinois, suggested that I write about this incident and about helpers whose assistance sometimes extends beyond the traditional dictates of the job. In doing so I will discuss its relationship to child welfare work.
In April, 2014, on the 30th anniversary of what many refer to as the Palm Sunday Massarcre, The New York Times front page story, The Toddler Who Survived, And a Cop Who Became Mom, described how after the mass murder of ten people, including the toddler's mother and two half brothers, Officer Jaffe began a relationship with the 13 month old that years later led to Chief Jaffe adopting the young woman. Officer Jaffe, one of the first officers on the scene, "was assigned to the toddler through the night, taking her to the hospital and then watching over her at a police station in East New York. The officer became the girl's benefactor, then a surrogate parent. At age 14, Christina moved in with the officer and her new husband. And then last year, the officer adopted Christina, now 31."
The Times article reminded me of the wife's aforementioned account of her husband's ordeal at the Chicago group home. The husband, a social worker at this group home, took one of the male residents to get an ice cream cone. The social worker was summarily fired because of this. While my only knowledge of this incident comes from the wife's telling, I was, however, familiar with this agency and recall other examples of their unreasonable and Freudian influenced ways of thinking and modes of operation. They excelled in their attempts at attributing behavioral pathology to both youngsters and parents, usually contrary to all available evidence.
Now what exactly could have been the problem with the group home social worker taking a boy for an ice cream cone? How would that have influenced the boy's so-called treatment at the group home? How would a trip to the ice cream store have influenced the boy's thinking and attitude toward the social worker? Toward the group home? Could the boy have been hurt by this? Could he have been helped? Could the boy have been neither hurt nor helped but could he rather have just experienced a normal everyday pleasure that kids everywhere do? And, in his isolated and dreary group home existence, the boy would have most probably appreciated this opportunity so much more. What rules did the social worker transgress by taking the kid for ice cream? Did he overstep the accepted boundaries between a social worker and client? Did this constitute a multiple relationship?
Again, I do not have first-hand knowledge of what occurred at the group home but did hear about this from the social worker's wife, herself a child welfare social worker. And as I said, what she described fit with my experience with this agency. I therefore am quite confident about what occurred and about the group home's reaction.
It is also important to stress that the boy was a resident of this group home because he was removed from his parents' custody. The parents' behavior had allegedly led to the boy's removal from their home. That was the reason for his placement there. He had not been placed there because he needed to avail himself to psychotherapy. So when we begin to speak about the ethical issues of boundaries and multiple relationships, it is imperative that this be kept in mind.
Freudian mythology, that has caused much harm to multitudes of people over the decades, was basically the rationalization for the group home's reaction to the social worker's ice cream episode. But would even some hard-core Freudians not agree that this scenario was not the same as a therapy situation? But the administration of this agency rigidly and persistently dealt with their clients, in and out of their group home, from what they believed was a Freudian perspective. Did they do this out of a mistaken conviction in Freudian ideology or did this approach make it easier for them to not attend to the developmental needs and basics that people need to grow?
Even though "psychoanalysis, as a mode of treatment, has been experiencing a long institutional decline is no longer in serious dispute," as Frederick Crews has said, remnants of Freudian ideology pop up quite often when people are called "clients" and other people are called "helpers" of various sorts. In light of this, it is worthy to continue Crews' quote at length:
"Freud's doctrine has been faring no better, in scientifically serious quarters, as a cluster of propositions about the mind. Without significant experimental or epidemiological support for any of its notions, psychoanalysis has simply been left behind by mainstream psychological research. No one has been able to mount a successful defense against the charge, most fully developed in Adolf Grunbaum's meticulous Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984), that 'clinical validation' of Freudian hypotheses is an epistemic sieve; as a means of gaining knowledge, psychoanalysis is fatally contaminated by the inclusion, among its working assumptions and in its dialogue with patients, of the very ideas that supposedly get corroborated by clinical experience. And Grunbaum further showed that even if Freud's means of gathering evidence had been sound, that evidence couldn't have reliably yielded the usual constructions that he placed on it. We cannot be surprised, then by Malcolm Macmillan's exhaustive demonstration (1997) that Freud's theories of personality and neurosis---derived as they were from misleading precedents, vacuous pseudophysical metaphors, and a long concatenation of mistaken inferences that couldn't be subjected to empirical review---amount to castles in the air."
The work of police officers and social workers differs as do the guidelines they usually are expected to follow. But cops too are probably subject to rules and standards and some of them probably address issues similar to the boundaries and multiple relationship guidelines for social workers and psychologists. Did Officer Jaffe overstep her role and violate some rule or did she act in a humane and kind manner in her relationship with the girl?
At this point it is important to differentiate between Freudian and Freudian induced reasons for certain restrictions upon helpers' behavior and the more sensible and, ostensibly, protective guidelines, such as those delineated by the American Psychological Association.
The APA Ethical Principles for Psychologists and Code of Conduct states that, "A multiple relationship occurs when a psychologist is in a professional role with a person and (1) at the same time is in another role with the same person...A psychologist refrains from entering into a multiple relationship if the multiple relationship could reasonably be expected to impair the psychologist's objectivity, competence, or effectiveness in performing his or her functions as a psychologist, or otherwise risks exploitation or harm to the person with whom the professional relationship exists. Multiple relationships that would not reasonably be expected to cause impairment or risk exploitation or harm are not unethical."
The American Counseling Association Code of Ethics reads, "Counselors must make every effort to avoid dual relationships with clients that could impair their professional judgment or increase the risk of harm to clients. When a dual relationship cannot be avoided, counselors must take appropriate steps to ensure that judgment is not impaired and that no exploitation occurs."
These kinds of guidelines seem to rule out the idea of misconduct on the part of the group home social worker. The police officer's role with the girl would not have extended much beyond those first few days had Officer Jaffe not decided to remain involved and therefore no ethical issue was in question. But the social worker's and police officer's jobs were also different because while the officer's involvement constituted multiple relations the social worker's really did not. Taking the boy for an ice cream cone was not "another role" for the social worker but was in fact part and parcel of just the kind of thing a group home social worker should be doing. And this is an important point that is often misunderstood, in great part, because of the Freudian influence. And this influence is one of the reasons why children living in foster care and group homes usually are subjected to lives almost devoid of any of the normal developmental stimulation and opportunities they need to grow and build satisfying lives. Sometimes, it is merely used as an excuse not to provide these things.
Social worker Francine Derrick wrote in an e-mail that, "When I was doing my internship at [IDCFS] I had a 16 year old girl who had been in a lot of different foster homes and was doing so so in her current one and thrived on the individual attention I was able to give her. We got together weekly and talked a lot about everything and she was assigned a different caseworker in my unit when my internship was up, but all agreed she needed to keep in touch with me for a while so I gave her my home number and she called when she felt the need, frequently at first but less as she acclimated to the new worker and was doing better in home and school. I knew that wasn't normal policy and I was glad [that my supervisor] could see beyond that to doing what was best for the girl who had very few positive relationships in her life. We kept in touch for a couple of years."
Francine continues, "On the opposite end of that scale I recall an incident at the mental health center where I was doing my other placement where a supervisor was very Freudian oriented as was the MSW student, and one of her clients, a troubled young man, brought her a small Christmas present. Not only did she refuse to accept it at her supervisor's insistence, but she insisted that they explore what was behind him bringing it to her. Oy vey, it was a damn Christmas present which his mother had suggested he get! Needless to say the young man stopped coming in. That's the kind of great work our MSW's are being trained to do. That being said, I have another MSW friend who adopted a kid in her caseload 20 years ago when he was five years old, and they're still doing great so I guess we shouldn't lump all MSW's together."
The nature of effective and competent child welfare work very often necessitates a broader and more involved commitment from the worker. As long as the worker's ethical mind-set is appropriate this is hardly a multiple relationship, but rather one based on what is needed and on a humane, logical and kind approach. We will continue to discuss this in future blog articles.
A recent article about the NYPD's highest ranking female chief, Joanne Jaffe, and her close personal involvement with the sole survivor of a murdered family brought to mind what this social worker's wife told me many years ago. Francine Derrick, another social worker formerly of Chicago and now a resident of McHenry, Illinois, suggested that I write about this incident and about helpers whose assistance sometimes extends beyond the traditional dictates of the job. In doing so I will discuss its relationship to child welfare work.
In April, 2014, on the 30th anniversary of what many refer to as the Palm Sunday Massarcre, The New York Times front page story, The Toddler Who Survived, And a Cop Who Became Mom, described how after the mass murder of ten people, including the toddler's mother and two half brothers, Officer Jaffe began a relationship with the 13 month old that years later led to Chief Jaffe adopting the young woman. Officer Jaffe, one of the first officers on the scene, "was assigned to the toddler through the night, taking her to the hospital and then watching over her at a police station in East New York. The officer became the girl's benefactor, then a surrogate parent. At age 14, Christina moved in with the officer and her new husband. And then last year, the officer adopted Christina, now 31."
The Times article reminded me of the wife's aforementioned account of her husband's ordeal at the Chicago group home. The husband, a social worker at this group home, took one of the male residents to get an ice cream cone. The social worker was summarily fired because of this. While my only knowledge of this incident comes from the wife's telling, I was, however, familiar with this agency and recall other examples of their unreasonable and Freudian influenced ways of thinking and modes of operation. They excelled in their attempts at attributing behavioral pathology to both youngsters and parents, usually contrary to all available evidence.
Now what exactly could have been the problem with the group home social worker taking a boy for an ice cream cone? How would that have influenced the boy's so-called treatment at the group home? How would a trip to the ice cream store have influenced the boy's thinking and attitude toward the social worker? Toward the group home? Could the boy have been hurt by this? Could he have been helped? Could the boy have been neither hurt nor helped but could he rather have just experienced a normal everyday pleasure that kids everywhere do? And, in his isolated and dreary group home existence, the boy would have most probably appreciated this opportunity so much more. What rules did the social worker transgress by taking the kid for ice cream? Did he overstep the accepted boundaries between a social worker and client? Did this constitute a multiple relationship?
Again, I do not have first-hand knowledge of what occurred at the group home but did hear about this from the social worker's wife, herself a child welfare social worker. And as I said, what she described fit with my experience with this agency. I therefore am quite confident about what occurred and about the group home's reaction.
It is also important to stress that the boy was a resident of this group home because he was removed from his parents' custody. The parents' behavior had allegedly led to the boy's removal from their home. That was the reason for his placement there. He had not been placed there because he needed to avail himself to psychotherapy. So when we begin to speak about the ethical issues of boundaries and multiple relationships, it is imperative that this be kept in mind.
Freudian mythology, that has caused much harm to multitudes of people over the decades, was basically the rationalization for the group home's reaction to the social worker's ice cream episode. But would even some hard-core Freudians not agree that this scenario was not the same as a therapy situation? But the administration of this agency rigidly and persistently dealt with their clients, in and out of their group home, from what they believed was a Freudian perspective. Did they do this out of a mistaken conviction in Freudian ideology or did this approach make it easier for them to not attend to the developmental needs and basics that people need to grow?
Even though "psychoanalysis, as a mode of treatment, has been experiencing a long institutional decline is no longer in serious dispute," as Frederick Crews has said, remnants of Freudian ideology pop up quite often when people are called "clients" and other people are called "helpers" of various sorts. In light of this, it is worthy to continue Crews' quote at length:
"Freud's doctrine has been faring no better, in scientifically serious quarters, as a cluster of propositions about the mind. Without significant experimental or epidemiological support for any of its notions, psychoanalysis has simply been left behind by mainstream psychological research. No one has been able to mount a successful defense against the charge, most fully developed in Adolf Grunbaum's meticulous Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984), that 'clinical validation' of Freudian hypotheses is an epistemic sieve; as a means of gaining knowledge, psychoanalysis is fatally contaminated by the inclusion, among its working assumptions and in its dialogue with patients, of the very ideas that supposedly get corroborated by clinical experience. And Grunbaum further showed that even if Freud's means of gathering evidence had been sound, that evidence couldn't have reliably yielded the usual constructions that he placed on it. We cannot be surprised, then by Malcolm Macmillan's exhaustive demonstration (1997) that Freud's theories of personality and neurosis---derived as they were from misleading precedents, vacuous pseudophysical metaphors, and a long concatenation of mistaken inferences that couldn't be subjected to empirical review---amount to castles in the air."
The work of police officers and social workers differs as do the guidelines they usually are expected to follow. But cops too are probably subject to rules and standards and some of them probably address issues similar to the boundaries and multiple relationship guidelines for social workers and psychologists. Did Officer Jaffe overstep her role and violate some rule or did she act in a humane and kind manner in her relationship with the girl?
At this point it is important to differentiate between Freudian and Freudian induced reasons for certain restrictions upon helpers' behavior and the more sensible and, ostensibly, protective guidelines, such as those delineated by the American Psychological Association.
The APA Ethical Principles for Psychologists and Code of Conduct states that, "A multiple relationship occurs when a psychologist is in a professional role with a person and (1) at the same time is in another role with the same person...A psychologist refrains from entering into a multiple relationship if the multiple relationship could reasonably be expected to impair the psychologist's objectivity, competence, or effectiveness in performing his or her functions as a psychologist, or otherwise risks exploitation or harm to the person with whom the professional relationship exists. Multiple relationships that would not reasonably be expected to cause impairment or risk exploitation or harm are not unethical."
The American Counseling Association Code of Ethics reads, "Counselors must make every effort to avoid dual relationships with clients that could impair their professional judgment or increase the risk of harm to clients. When a dual relationship cannot be avoided, counselors must take appropriate steps to ensure that judgment is not impaired and that no exploitation occurs."
These kinds of guidelines seem to rule out the idea of misconduct on the part of the group home social worker. The police officer's role with the girl would not have extended much beyond those first few days had Officer Jaffe not decided to remain involved and therefore no ethical issue was in question. But the social worker's and police officer's jobs were also different because while the officer's involvement constituted multiple relations the social worker's really did not. Taking the boy for an ice cream cone was not "another role" for the social worker but was in fact part and parcel of just the kind of thing a group home social worker should be doing. And this is an important point that is often misunderstood, in great part, because of the Freudian influence. And this influence is one of the reasons why children living in foster care and group homes usually are subjected to lives almost devoid of any of the normal developmental stimulation and opportunities they need to grow and build satisfying lives. Sometimes, it is merely used as an excuse not to provide these things.
Social worker Francine Derrick wrote in an e-mail that, "When I was doing my internship at [IDCFS] I had a 16 year old girl who had been in a lot of different foster homes and was doing so so in her current one and thrived on the individual attention I was able to give her. We got together weekly and talked a lot about everything and she was assigned a different caseworker in my unit when my internship was up, but all agreed she needed to keep in touch with me for a while so I gave her my home number and she called when she felt the need, frequently at first but less as she acclimated to the new worker and was doing better in home and school. I knew that wasn't normal policy and I was glad [that my supervisor] could see beyond that to doing what was best for the girl who had very few positive relationships in her life. We kept in touch for a couple of years."
Francine continues, "On the opposite end of that scale I recall an incident at the mental health center where I was doing my other placement where a supervisor was very Freudian oriented as was the MSW student, and one of her clients, a troubled young man, brought her a small Christmas present. Not only did she refuse to accept it at her supervisor's insistence, but she insisted that they explore what was behind him bringing it to her. Oy vey, it was a damn Christmas present which his mother had suggested he get! Needless to say the young man stopped coming in. That's the kind of great work our MSW's are being trained to do. That being said, I have another MSW friend who adopted a kid in her caseload 20 years ago when he was five years old, and they're still doing great so I guess we shouldn't lump all MSW's together."
The nature of effective and competent child welfare work very often necessitates a broader and more involved commitment from the worker. As long as the worker's ethical mind-set is appropriate this is hardly a multiple relationship, but rather one based on what is needed and on a humane, logical and kind approach. We will continue to discuss this in future blog articles.