This Is How We Help

The girl was lying on the ground, handcuffed, her body powerless and eyes covered in tears as she shouted angry words at everyone in the conference room. I could feel the enormous rage inside her, and I tried my best to shut down the deep and confusing darkness I felt building up inside me. It was just another day at my job as a social worker, trying to make the world a better place. This is what we do, and this is how we help, I told myself.

I had arrived at the school 20 minutes earlier, feeling somewhat hopeful. The girl, my client, had been struggling with truancy for over two years, and each day was a battle. She had real fears and real reasons to stay home. I never doubted that. But this was the first time in maybe six months that she had arrived at school on time and remained in the classroom past 11 a.m. My goal for the day was to come up with a plan to help her improve her school attendance, with the assistance of her special ed teacher, counselor, principal, and the school resource officer—the person she had trusted the most.

Upon my arrival, I was told that a teacher had reported my client for having a vape on school grounds. Staff would need to confiscate it, they said. I chose to let them do their job. After all, this is how we help.

My client entered the room, thinking we were ready to ask the same old questions and force her to express her needs. Instead, she was confronted with an interrogation, followed by a warning that she must give up the vape or be forcibly searched.

She was angry, and I know she felt betrayed. She had always been a feisty girl. I never thought this was a bad thing, and I made sure she knew that. She had a hard time in social situations, and her anxiety was almost tangible. Her mom was a single mother of three, always working two jobs, sometimes three, and trying her best. Her father was never around. But she yearned for his love, and his absence left her feeling empty and alone. 

Nobody made space for these details in the moments that followed.

When my client did not come forward with the vape, the SRO, once her favorite person in that room, searched her against her will. She was furious and on the verge of having a panic attack. The vape fell to the floor. She began yelling and threw a walkie-talkie. The SRO deemed this dangerous and restrained her. In the brief tussle that followed, my client bit the officer’s arm.

“ENOUGH,” the SRO yelled.

Seconds later, my client’s face was on the ground, her hands cuffed tightly across her back. She sobbed and screamed, and in that moment, I knew a part of her was gone forever.

She was only 14 years old. After that very long day, I sat in my car in the empty parking lot and broke down. I, too, sobbed and screamed, knowing that I had also lost a part of me forever.

I now carry with me the irreversible memory of being party to a cruel attack on innocence. On paper, my name might not appear as a perpetrator. But in the depths of my own morality and commitment to human rights, I knew that my work and the institutions I represented bore responsibility for this irreparable harm.

Isn’t it interesting? When you go to social work school, they teach you to have empathy and compassion above all. But at the same time, you must avoid becoming emotionally attached to your clients. They teach you the importance of honoring a person’s inherent dignity and worth. But one of the biggest parts of the job requires pushing—sometimes forcing—your clients to fundamentally change who they are.

After the incident, I came to hate my job. I hated what it did to the people I served. I hated what it had done to me, bringing me to a point where I could instinctually justify my client’s dehumanization as a valid response to her breaking the rules. This could not be how we helped.

I got into youth justice because I believe children are the future. But the way in which I did my job didn’t feel just. I wanted to run, but how could I leave my clients behind? But then again, how could I stay?

I decided to leave my position to study public policy because I know social workers like me can help build a future where we don’t have to just help clients withstand systemic failure. We can lead from experience to condemn these flaws while reimagining better ways to help. 

The truth is that social workers belong everywhere. We must not be confined to the work that takes place in the gray, windowless rooms of juvenile detention centers and at the homes of families who struggle, understandably, to trust that we have their best interests in mind.

Social workers belong in boardrooms and at the tables where policies are too often determined by individuals who somehow can’t see that stripping a child of their freedoms constitutes a violation of innocence and human life.

Dear child, I am sorry I left you. I think about you often. My feelings do not matter, and my apologies can’t give you back what was taken on that day.

But I wake up every day trying, looking for solutions, and telling your story because, for children in America, your experience cannot continue to be just another day.

ICYMI—From The Appeal

Children held in an adult jail in Louisiana have been forced to sleep on the floor, shot at with pepper balls, and imprisoned close to adults, according to a court filing by the ACLU. Louisiana transferred the children to Jackson Parish Jail after a federal judge ruled they couldn’t remain in the former death row unit at the notorious Angola prison, but advocates say the kids have faced abuse in their new facility, too.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the Phoenix Police Department for potential civil rights violations. During last week’s city council meeting, residents said city officials must stop fighting the inquiry.