Tennesee Democrat: Child welfare a 'national nightmare'

‘Every state is failing.’ Representative Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) expressed that heated sentiment at an urban caucus and rural working group joint symposium on child welfare reform. Cooper wished America could do more to help the 520,000 children who remain in the welfare system and wanted to resolve ‘this national nightmare.’

Secretary Deb Bowman from the South Dakota Department of Social Services described the lack of mental health services and professionals which posed a unique problem to rural areas. Bowman added that social workers in rural areas are on-call for one third of the year and there was a great difficulty in recruiting a quality child welfare workforce as no university in South Dakota offers a Masters of Social Work degree.

Professor Gary Nelson from the University of North Carolina School of Social Work said that rural communities in North Carolina demonstrated equal, if not more superior, child welfare outcomes compared to their urban counterparts. According to Nelson, rural communities had 165 fewer days in foster care than urban counties and he attributed it to a greater sense of community, self-reliance and accountability found in the rural setting. Nelson felt that if a social worker was not familiar with the child, they were more likely to make mistakes and so he deemed it important to develop a more personal attitude toward social work.