25.3.11

Really?

Yesterday I made my first CPS report for an incident of physical abuse a student reported to me. I don't know how I've avoided it for so long, I think I've always had teachers volunteer to report whatever we had together witnessed. Anyway, the computers were down in the afternoon, so I had to painstakingly look the number up in the yellow pages - the real yellow pages - and call them up. The lady who answered the phone sounded giddy, which was not what I was expecting for someone who works for a 24 hour child welfare hotline. We're going through the report, answering demographic questions, and she asked if I knew if the child had any siblings. When I said yes, and was even able to say what school he attends, as she filled in whatever she was filling in on her end of the phone line, I heard a mumbled, but very clearly this word, "Awesome." WTF? I thought for a moment I was on the phone with the enthusiastic car insurance represantive I'd talked to weeks earlier while I was getting ready to purchase a new policy. 

1 comment:

  1. Having worked at CPS for my community health clinical, I can say with some certainty that she said that because you saved her a great deal of work by knowing. That information simultaneously made it easier to correctly identify the parents in the system as well as providing less hostile witnesses than the parents to substantiate what's going on in the home. It also gives the investigators 3 stories to glean the true facts from.

    I think it's fabulous you found someone in a thankless state government job enthusiastic about her work.

    ReplyDelete