Social Work and DFPS partnership : Working together to promote student success under Title IV-E
By: Karen Kwon & Bianca Castrejon
The Child Welfare Training Collaborative (CWTC) Title IV-E project has been in existence since 2014 with efforts to strengthen the El Paso Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) Child Protective Services (CPS) Region’s workforce. The CWTC-CPS partnership works closely to instill social work skills and increase knowledge that best equips CPS staff to arrive at the best outcomes possible for the children under state care. As MSW graduates, the stipend recipient has access to advancement opportunities. There have been 13 CPS staff that have completed their Masters in Social Work (MSW) since the inception of the project. The CPS staff that have completed the MSW program have maintained their tenure with CPS. Some of the stipend graduates have been promoted within their respective departments. The project members ensure with every resource available the success of each CPS worker that enters the MSW Program at UTEP. Mrs. Jessica Perales is a great example of the partnership’s success - the following is a highlight of her success, experience and future endeavors as a Title IV-E MSW stipend alumni.
Ms. Perales, a UTEP BSW and MSW alumna, completed the MSW program in 2017 at which time she was a caseworker. At present, she continues her social work career at CPS as a Supervisor. Mrs. Perales also serves as the Field Supervisor to Title IV- E MSW interns completing their practicum at CPS.
>Ms. Perales received her BSW degree in 2007 and after graduating, she began her first year with CPS in 2008. She worked at CPS for five years before she began the UTEP MSW program under the Title IV-E project in 2013.
>Ms. Perales expressed that the MSW program and the Title IV-E program led her to having access to many opportunities, one of them being working in the kinship program at CPS, in her second year at the MSW program. She described the kinship program as a support system for family members/relatives that serve as caregivers to children under CPS conservatorship, thus reducing the number of children placed in foster homes. In many cases, grandparents and aunts/uncles are primary caregivers for these children if their parents are not able to care for these children. Thus, the kinship program tries to keep family relatives and children connected by providing them with financial support and connected to community resources.
>Ms. Perales states that working at the internship program at CPS was helpful because she also had to balance work life at CPS, academic life and her personal life. Eventually, she encountered her own challenges on her third year as she was challenged with familial issues (her daughter became ill) and felt that splitting her obligations with her family, school, work and internship became overly demanding. In addition, she had an internship that was outside the realms of CPS. Ms. Perales completed her internship at “Project Vida” and even though it was a rewarding experience working with this organization, commuting to different places with very limited time during the day became difficult. Despite this challenging period, she received an immense amount of support from CPS staff members and her friends in the MSW program which enabled her to continue her academic plans and manage her work life.
During her last year at the MSW program, Ms. Perales completed her research project that would later become pivotal to her current work at CPS. Her research project was on fostering connections in the kinship program, specifically researching how many families (relatives of kids) can become licensed in order to receive better support (e.g. financial support) and benefits as licensed kinship caregivers. In the end, she wanted to see how families really benefit from being licensed instead of just obtaining permanent managing conservatorship of the children with no benefits. As a result of her research, she was able to find that there were very few families that became licensed and did not have enough resources and benefits to support the children.
>Her research then influenced her work at CPS upon graduation. She graduated with a 3.89, and then began working at CPS as a family group facilitator. After 18 months, she was promoted to a CPS Supervisor. As a supervisor, Ms. Perales used the trends she found in her research project to improve the kinship program for families and their children. Ms. Perales is specifically trying to see how she can limit the barriers in receiving kinship licenses for families trying to stay connected to blood related children. Her ultimate goal is to reach positive permanency for kids and provide support for their caregivers (e.g. blood family relatives). The department has implemented actions to limit the barriers in receiving the kinship licensure. There is now assistance in getting licensed which includes forms of financial assistance in the routine FBI checks that are performed on caregiver homes, providing medical lock boxes and fire extinguishers for caregiver homes, and help in fixing homes to be up to code to pass licensing standards. In addition, Ms. Perales has made a list of resources available for caregivers that helps them access supportive services from different organizations. Ms. Perales has worked closely with foster adoption agencies to incorporate supportive services and ensure that children are able to remain with family rather than being placed in foster care.
Aside overseeing the kinship program, she responds to emergency calls involving the safety and well-being of children in foster care. Her team coordinates meetings with conservatorship programs, and she supports staff by making herself available to them as needed. Ms. Perales also pays it forward as a UTEP Master of Social Work graduate and volunteers as a field supervisor for UTEP CWTC MSW interns. She ensures that CPS competencies are understood and met. Her days are long and include child watch, which involves supervising children under DFPS supervision. Ms. Perales works an average of 50+ hours a week.
The long hours she endures with her staff leads her to prioritize self-care among her staff. Ms. Perales notes that she witnesses high burnout rates at CPS. Many staff members take on emotionally challenging cases (e.g. child deaths) that can take a toll on their mental and emotional well-being. Ms. Perales is a proponent of supporting her staff and creating a culture that nurtures self-care that leads to resiliency, which in turn, brings people together. She is a firm believer that being a supervisor is not only about giving directives to staff, but also about being a team player and supporting staff.
After examining and reminiscing on her experiences as am MSW stipend student recipient of the project, Ms. Perales provided some recommendations for current and future recipients of this project. She recommends creating study groups or a community of friends that can serve as a support system, reaching out to a boss/supervisor for assistance if balancing responsibilities becomes difficult, and lastly, to not over stress and to not plan too ahead into the future. By thinking or stressing about the list of things that need to be accomplished in the future, Ms. Perales feels that she would burden herself unnecessarily without actually enjoying the present.
She also further reflects that in a couple of years from now, she hopes to continue her work with CPS and hopefully, one day become a CPS administrator. Ms. Perales wants to shadow the current program administrator in order to prepare herself for the role she one day wants to take on. She has plans to retire from CPS as a seasoned administrator. She then would like to venture out to other fields in social work she finds intriguing, specifically to schools or hospitals.
