A tough case at work….
September 19, 2008, 12:09 am
Filed under:
Child Protective Services,
MSW,
child abuse,
hospital social work,
mandatory reporting,
social work | Tags:
CPS,
foster parent,
fracture,
red flagsYesterday was the first time I was involved with a CPS seizure of a child since starting at my current employer (about 5 months now). It was a very clear-cut case. The 2 month old baby had one confirmed fracture and another possible fracture. One of the parents was arrested at the hospital. The baby spent the night at the hospital and went home with a foster parent the next morning.
It was interesting to meet the foster parent. She had apparently been fostering babies for 24 years and had adopted two of the babies she had fostered! She had been ready to retire from fostering but the CPS worker had called her and ask for her to help out. It was interesting for me to meet someone who was interested in fostering babies. I guess there are pros and cons to fostering any age of child, but for me I don’t know if I would want to foster infants. Of course, with older children there are probably more behavioral issues to deal with. Like I said, pros and cons.
Today, I went to medical records to look at the mother’s chart from when she delivered. I was filled with anxiety that I had seen her and had missed something. But, when I looked at the chart there was no referral for social services and none of us social workers saw her. But, I’m thinking we should have gotten a referral. There were several, small, red flags. Of course, looking at it hindsight, that might be easy for me to say. And, honestly, I don’t know that it would have changed the outcome had we seen the mother when the baby was born.
The memory of a two year old….
So today we went to the little mall in Albany to do a little shopping. They were having a “safety fair” sort of thing. They had the police, sherrif’s office, fire department, forest service, etc., there providing information, balloons, free pencils, coloring books and the like. They also had a LifeFlight helicopter. My older son was SO very excited to see the helicopter and to be so close to the helicopter and seeing the pilot and flight crew. My younger son, on the other hand, was pretty well freaked out. Then, apparently, they were called out to an accident. They backed everyone away and fired it up and took off. Once again, my older son thought that this was the most exciting thing he had ever seen and my younger son become totally unglued.
I think he was remembering , at least on some level, when he had to be life-flighted to the children’s hospital about 15 months ago. My husband thinks I’m crazy to think he could possibly remember that given how sick he was and how much younger he was at the time. But, I don’t have any other explanation for his reaction. I remember that even shortly after his illness when he would hear helicopters he would run to somewhere he felt safe. This would happen fairly frequently since we don’t live too far from the hospital. He no longer does this. But I don’t have any other explanation for why he would be so frightened by seeing a helicopter up close, other than having some sort of memory about his one and only helicopter ride.
Which would be worse?
Today, while I was on the floor, I watched a family say good-bye to their loved one as they were taken off to surgery. I don’t have any idea what kind of surgery they were having as we hadn’t been given an order to see that patient. About an hour later, after I and one of my co-workers had sat down for lunch, an overhead page came on….”Mass transfusion protocol in OR 4!” As we heard this we said to one another, “Gosh, that doesn’t sound good!”
And then I thought about that family…wondering if they were in the hospital or not. I assume that they were as most families wait around while their loved ones are in surgery. But, I can’t imagine what that would be like to know your loved one is in surgery and then to hear something like that overhead while you wait. I assume that they don’t know which particular OR their loved one was sent to, which would only add to their anxiety. And it made me think, which would be worse for a family? To know which OR their loved one was in and that some catastrophic event had transpired? Or to not know and wonder if their loved one was involved in the catastrophic event? I just don’t know.
