Celebrating Social Work Month - Staff Spotlight: Jessica M

What is your role at York Region CAS?

I am an Intake and assessment worker on the Serious Occurrence Team at York CAS. Intake workers are responsible for investigating child protection concerns reported to the agency. As a worker on the Serious Occurrence Team, I investigate concerns for children in the community within their families as well as other environments such as schools, daycares, or summer camps. It is my role to assess the safety of the child as well as assess the risk to the child. During our investigations we work closely with caregivers, parents, and the children to address any concerns that may be putting a child at risk of harm. We do this in many ways such as connecting families with supports in the community, creating plans with the family to ensure the child’s safety and wellbeing, or providing our services on a longer-term basis to continue supporting the family. When investigating a caregiver in the community that is not the parent of the child, we work closely with the schools, the school boards, and the Ministry of Education to ensure the children in our region are safe at home as well as in the community.

What do you like most about your role here?

My favourite part of my role is connecting with families and children and building relationships. Being involved with a children’s aid society can be a very difficult time for families. A parent getting a call from me letting them know we have opened an investigation is usually the worst part of their day. It’s a rewarding part of my job when I am still able to build a relationship with a family even with the negative stigma around Children’s Aid Societies. As a worker with CAS, I inherently hold a lot of power and when I am able to break down some of these barriers and truly connect with a family, it is an amazing thing. There are a lot of cases in which I can help to support families and connect them with supports. When I can build a relationship based on mutual respect with a family, I can show them the positive impacts CAS can have and the support that we can offer.

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Tell us about the importance of the role of social workers at York Region CAS and in our community as a whole?

?Children’s Aid Societies have a history in our communities that we need to acknowledge. There has been a lot of harm caused by CAS, specifically towards marginalized communities. As an institution, CAS is still continuously changing our ways of practice and how we work with families to ensure we are providing the best services possible to our community. CAS today still has an important purpose as there are children and families in our community who need help and are in danger.

As a social worker, it is crucial that when I am working with families or institutions in our community, I am ensuring the safety of the children while also respecting the child and family’s identity, focusing on the strengths of the families as a whole and ensuring I maintain an anti-oppressive lens in my work. As a social worker, I am not only assessing the safety of the child, but I am also working collaboratively with families and community members to engage in important conversations around goals, hardships, past traumas, and more. Working with families is never black and white and we tend to say we “work in the gray”. We work within the realm of the most important thing in people’s lives, their families. It is important that we acknowledge and respect this. Social workers have a huge responsibility and importance in our communities as we provide a wide range of support from a listening ear to families going through difficult times to advocating and protecting children and youth in harmful or dangerous situations. I have always believed that in fact it “takes a village to raise a child”, and as a social worker I am honored to be a part of that village for children and their families.