The Team Approach

by Richard Bermack

September 2002

Christine Hudson has been a DA for 15 years, and she loves her new job representing kids. “The difference is this isn't a criminal case,” she explains. “It is more rewarding than prosecuting, although there are rewards in putting some people in jail. When you are working with kids, you feel like you are making a difference in someone's life. It can be as small as getting a kid into summer camp, or as major as making sure a child ends up in the right home.”

Hudson acknowledges that she couldn't do it without the help of a social worker. “When I first started, the only social worker we had was Michael [Gammino], and we had to ration him,” she says with a smile. “I'm not a social worker, I'm a lawyer. I don't have the psychological background, and to represent a client you can't always rely on another party. I need a social worker that is working for me, not DFCS.”

Hudson gives some examples of the help she needs from a social worker: “I had a case where the parents were extremely neglectful, the children were malnourished and behind in school. The mother was mentally ill. But why was the father allowing the neglect to happen? The [DFCS] social worker wanted to return the kids to the father, but I was concerned. I wanted to know if he had the strength to end the relationship with the mother and to take care of the kids. So I needed Mike to evaluate him.”

Hudson describes another case involving a mother who had been addicted to drugs. She had completed rehabilitation, but the department was concerned that she lacked parenting skills and wanted to terminate the reunification. “Drug parents are sometimes clueless. They lacked the opportunity to be parents, and even when they become sober and get their kids back, suddenly they don't know what to do,” Gammino explains. Often social workers use supervised visits to teach them how to parent. The mother lived in another state, so Hudson sent Gammino to observe a visit between the mother, the child, and the caretaker. “I would have had no sense if a visit is going well. We are not trained to do that,” Hudson confides.

Gammino explains what he looks for: “I watch to see how engaging the parent is, how they greet the child. Does the child cling to the foster parent and cry, or is it no big deal when one of the parents leaves. In physical abuse cases, the baby may be fearful of the parent. I've had cases where the baby doesn't want to go to the parent because they saw the parent abuse the other parent.”

One of the best things about the DA/social worker team is that the social workers are not as restricted by the department's regulations as social workers who work for the department. Hudson recalls one particularly complex case. A ten-year-old child was removed from his parents because he was starting fires, getting into fights, and engaging in destructive sexual behavior. His mother had substance abuse issues and suffered from clinical depression. The father was in prison. The child went from placement to placement, group home to group home. All he wanted was to visit with his parents, and when the parents missed a visit, as they invariably did, he would come to court and act out. He wanted a relationship with his mother and father and they consistently failed him.

“When the child was 13, the father finally got out of prison and started to get his life together. He started to express interest in visiting his son, but social services had made up their mind that dad was a loser,” Hudson says. “He was not fulfilling all of his reunification plans and the department wanted to end services.”

Gammino was sent to evaluate the father and found that he was now ready to take the child. He went from having supervised visits to overnights, and the child's behavior was improving. The part of the plan the father was falling down on was group therapy for domestic violence. “The father was a brusque guy. He was pretty hardened from his years in prison, and he just wasn't going to open up in a group,” Gammino states. He was cooperative and completed his individual therapy, and his domestic violence issues were marginal and he didn't want to discuss them in a group. From the department's standpoint, this was reason to terminate. However, the son's behavior was improving and he wanted to be with his father. It was clearly in the son's best interest to be with the father, even if he was not fulfilling the department regulations. Because the son is the DA's client, the DA persuaded the court to grant the father parental rights. Two years later, the father and son are doing great. Gammino is convinced that if the father and son had been separated, the son would probably have ended up either in jail or in a mental institution.

Quite often a department may have a policy that a client gets only 12 months of family maintenance services. Department social workers have to follow that regulation and recommend termination. But social workers like Gammino work for the DA, not the department, so they are not bound by that regulation. They can recommend extra reunification time if they believe it is in the child's best interest.