PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Pennsylvania requires that child welfare workers personally visit children in their caseload every month. However, teenagers in Philadelphia’s child welfare system can go for long periods of time without seeing a case worker in person — because they are doing check-ins by text, according to sources with direct knowledge of the practice.
People who work with the Community Umbrella Agencies, or CUAs, that provide direct services to children on behalf of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services (DHS) say that case workers will text teens on their caseload instead of seeing them in person, for a variety of reasons.
Teenagers can be notoriously hard to pin down. Whether it’s their schedule or their need for autonomy, they can resist spending time with authority figures. That’s why some caseworkers have taken to texting with teens.
The sources asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the subject — but they acknowledge it is not a best practice.
Child advocate Frank Cervone says texts can be an effective adjunct to in-person visits but not a substitute for them.
“You have to have eyes on the child. There are bruises. There’s an emotional statement. There’s the judgment that comes with interaction.”
Cervone says even teenagers must be seen in person with some frequency….
“Eyes-on practice, where you’re physically present with the young person, is essential in our work.”
Cervone says, as a lawyer who represents teenagers occasionally, he is sympathetic. He has found them to be adept at ducking in-person meetings. Text messages are at least a form of contact.
“They have all sorts of people poking around in their life and so they very often push back and say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you folks.’ So you’re going to make some accommodation to their experience, to their schedule, to their, in a sense, emotional state.”
DHS reports a 90% in-person visitation rate for most CUAs. An official says it doesn’t count texts as visits, but it also doesn’t collect data on texts, so it’s not sure how often caseworkers substitute texts for visits.
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