Many young social workers and students of social work suffer from what is known as burnout. Burnout is a feeling of impotency that leads to stress and job dissatisfaction, or else “burnout is just feeling sorry for yourself,” according to Dr. Jo Brocato, a thesis advisor here at California State University, Long Beach. If your dream is to be a Child Protective Services worker, one worker can show you that you shouldn’t let the idea of burnout discourage you, because helping others can be so deeply rewarding.
In the last seven years, Jessire Ramos has removed over 100 children from their homes as a Child Protective Services (CPS) employee.
It has become routine for her to take other people’s children — to hold them tightly in her arms, running from a house while the police sweep in behind her, the parents yelling obscenities.
“There will come a time when the stuff will get at you, and you will sit at your desk and cry like a little baby. Everyone does this. If you can’t get back up and do your job, you don’t belong here,” she tells all of her new trainees.
It is difficult to imagine Jessire training anyone when she looks so youthful. In the photo on her CPS badge, her smile is wide. Her head is cocked to the side, demurring and sweet. Her hair is long and dark. She looks wholesome, but she has also been known to frequent the bar, drawing uncomfortable stares by the other patrons who don’t get her morbid jokes.
“People mostly view us as evil baby snatchers,” Jessire says flatly.
CPS workers cannot remove children arbitrarily. They need to have a court order, for which they must have gotten a tip that there’s abuse or neglect happening. Sometimes the allegations come from a teacher, a neighbor or even a family member. Many times, the call is a lie from an ex-lover as blackmail or to get revenge.
There are 28,840 social workers in the state of California, which is more than any other state according to the United States Department of Labor, with nearly half of those workers practicing in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Glendale. Even so, there is a constant demand for more. Each worker can legally have up to 15 cases, where one case is equivalent to one dwelling and can include any number of children. This means that any given CPS worker could be responsible for up to 45 kids, yet have only 30 days to investigate each case.
As more workers become burnt out and quit, the amount of children at risk remains the same. Most workers are forced to exceed the legal case-load limit by supervisors who don’t have the resources to hire new staff. The federal government gives less funding to each state’s Department of Human Services every successive year, and that’s not counting the adjustments for inflation.
An investigation begins with a visit.
“Last Monday I walked into a house and started making a list on a piece of paper. ‘I need the dishes done, I need all these clothes picked up, and I’ll be back on Wednesday,’” Ramos warns the parents.
If the CPS worker finds that the allegations are true, the children will be removed. However, they prioritize leaving the children with their parents or placing them with a relative, if it’s possible.
“If you are trying and you are just being knocked down left and right, I will try to help you. But if you’re a piece of shit that cant get off your ass to change a kid’s diaper, then I’m going to make you work,” Jessire says, as one particular case comes to mind.
She had walked up to the apartment building where three dirty children under the age of ten were playing alone. At the door, a woman with brown skin and dark features got up from the couch, and Jessire introduced herself as a wave of human stench rolled out of the house. The woman sat back down again exhaustedly. Jessire walked in and explained why she was there and what she would do. The woman was passive.
Looking around, she saw a large broken television set against the far wall. A smaller TV sat in front of it, but this one was turned on. Three folding chairs made up the dining room. In the kitchen, dirty dishes with the food half-eaten filled the sink and covered the counters. Bits of food littered the floor.
The boy’s shared bedroom was equally sparse, with two mattresses on the floor and plastic tubs in which to store their clothes. The little girl slept with her mother, who also had a mattress on the floor.
Jessire tried to get into the bathroom, but there was so much waste on the floor that the door would not open all the way. The smell was awful and the toilet was stained yellow with urine that had not been cleaned in a long time.
She strode back into the living room where the woman sat in the same place.
“You have to get up.”
“I can’t get up,” the woman said.
“Honey, you have to get up. These kids need you!” Jessire said.
“I just can’t get up.” The woman was too tired.
“Are you on any medication?” she asked.
The woman showed her seven different bottles of strong psychotropic medications for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The woman was over-medicated. She got the woman’s sister’s phone number and called immediately. Then she called a psychiatrist. Instead of taking the three children into custody, she allowed their aunt to take care of them while the woman got her life back together.
On another day, arriving at the Human Services building, Jessire opens the glass door and walks into the lobby where people are waiting to be seen. She walks through a cloud of body odor and intense stares. She swipes her photo ID badge and keys in her code at the security entrance.
“I work in a hell of endless cubicles,” Jessire says. “I walk past 30 cubicles to get to mine. When we want to communicate, we yell at each other over the cubicle walls.” She has posted photos of her family and friends, some awards and sarcastic posters. Her desk is covered with files. The drawers are full of files. The cabinets are full of files. Social workers spend more time with files than they do with the kids.
She would sometimes hear a familiar sound and walk over to the two-way mirror, which displays the supervised visitation room.
“I knew he was here because I could hear his cry.” She watched mother and son in the small, institutionally gray room, unseen by them.
“I removed him when he was 3 weeks old, just the cutest little white boy with blue eyes. He was a beautiful baby. His parents, well, his dad was a pedophile and his mom didn’t want to leave the dad, so we had to remove the baby from both parents. The mom shook him. She always shook him,” she recalls.
Jessire cringed every time she saw his mother touch him. “I wanted to rip her head off.”
She happened to run into the baby with his new foster family last week. The baby let her hold him without crying.
“He’s walking! He looks so good, and it does my heart good. I don’t get a lot of positive things to keep me going, so when it happens it lasts a long time.”