Tag: social worker
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A Response to Naomi Schaefer Riley on Child Abuse Pediatricians from a Former CPS Social Worker
This essay is in response to this piece written by Naomi Schaefer Riley. I was a Child Protective Services (CPS) case worker in Kansas for ten years and investigated over 1400 reports, some of which involved child abuse pediatricians. I currently work as a therapist in a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) in Kansas and…
Andrea Verbanic
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When Addicted Parents Come Back
As a Child Protective Services social worker, I encountered drug addicts whose behavior was so troubling it was hard to fathom they could ever be capable of helping their children whose childhoods they had seemingly destroyed. When a mother is driving her child around in the backseat of a car with an active meth lab…
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A Book Update and Memoir-Adjacent Articles
My memoir Renegade Agency will be available for purchase on December 2, 2024. I’m unable to list the physical book for pre-order, but the Kindle version is available for pre-order now. Click here to pre-order the Kindle version. I toyed with the idea of adding QR codes in the text to link readers directly to…
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Professionals Can Be Just as Dysfunctional as the People They Serve
When I describe people who misrepresented information and refused to take accountability in a child abuse investigation, you might assume I am describing the suspects. Instead, I’m describing the police officer and Child Protective Services (CPS) workers who investigated me when a child I provided care for was discovered to have a spiral fracture in…
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Who Controls the Narrative?
Being believed depends on who you are. “Who disagrees with this statement: I believe what a police officer says is true because a police officer said it.” I was in a jury pool fielding questions from a prosecutor designed to weed out the undesirables from the final twelve. I immediately disagreed with the statement he…
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How Well Do We Serve the Most Vulnerable?
A case involving parents embroiled in a divorce-custody dispute sprang from the abyss one day and landed on my desk. Their conflict was so outrageous they had been reported to the child abuse hotline for it. Create an image of the worst divorce you’ve ever heard of and then multiply it by two. As a…
Andrea Verbanic 