The Children's Advocacy Center of Jackson County

Category: 30 Stories from 30 Years

  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 13

     

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    Living a Life of Gratitude

    This is story #13 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.  Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of
    that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the
    work even when it seemed impossible. 

    Living a Life of Gratitude

    This is one of those stories that is personal and is one that has developed over the last three years of my career.  There are seasons when your personal life takes over your professional career and sometimes it is the opposite.  This particularly is a pattern in the world of nonprofit leadership. Sometimes you recognize it and sometimes you don’t until well after the fact.  The same could be said for the moments in your life that become significant and have a profound impact on how you do your work, how you live your life and how you interact with people.

    Some of those events that I recognized the impact they would have over the span of my life time are the meeting of my now spouse, the birth of our son, the first child fatality I worked as a child protection investigator, being looked over for a promotion I really wanted, spreading my wings and moving across the country, a family member brutally murdered, a close friend mercilessly beaten and raped, becoming the Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County and three years ago my mother’s diagnosis of cancer, and then her death.

    Some of these events I didn’t recognize the long term influence.  My Mom’s volunteer work making life better for women and children.  My Dad’s life of service.  Being paired with the greatest child protection investigator in the state of Louisiana as my first mentor.  Coming face to face with an angry dad with a shot gun in his hand on my very first solo investigation.  Making the seemingly unimportant decision to go out with a friend to celebrate the finality of her divorce all those years ago and meeting a young handsome soldier.  

    Each of those events changed me in vastly different ways, they all had surprisingly affected me in some ways that were the same. 

    They built resiliency.  They gave me a different perspective on life.  And they made me thankful.  Yep.  The last one has completely changed my entire outlook on life.  I have started to live my life in gratitude.  Or maybe continued living that way with more intention.  Gratitude.  

    Living in gratitude as the Executive Director of a Children’s Advocacy Center is a profound experience that shapes both the personal and professional aspects of one’s life. In this role, each day serves as a reminder of the resilience and courage shown by children and families who endure and rise above trauma. This is not a journey of mere management or leadership; it is one deeply rooted in empathy, dedication, and a commitment to provide hope and healing. Living in gratitude transforms challenges into opportunities to make a meaningful impact, not just for the children we serve but also the broader community and the future.

    The most profound gratitude I feel is for the families and children who trust us with their stories.

    It’s an honor and a responsibility to stand beside them, often during their most vulnerable moments, and help them begin the journey toward healing. Each story is a testament to resilience, and each interaction reaffirms the importance of the work we do. Seeing these children emerge from trauma, empowered and supported, reminds me daily of the significance of compassion and patience. They inspire everyone on our team, providing a renewed purpose and reinforcing the center’s commitment to more than just making a difference but pathing the way to a stronger, healthier, safer community for our children to grow up in.

    I am deeply grateful for the team of dedicated professionals who work tirelessly alongside me.

    Each member brings unique skills and perspectives, united by a shared vision to support and protect children. Our staff, multidisciplinary team, Board, volunteers—the entire Children’s Advocacy Center Team bring unwavering dedication, often going above and beyond to create a safe space where children feel seen, heard, and valued. It is this unity and shared commitment that fuel our efforts and amplify the positive change we bring to children’s lives. I am grateful for their compassion, resilience, and the sacrifices they make daily, knowing that their work has a ripple effect on the community as a whole.

    Gratitude also extends to the broader community—our supporters, partners, and donors who believe in our mission and provide the resources necessary to make it possible.

    Their generosity and support are essential to our work, allowing us to offer specialized services, therapeutic programs, and resources that would otherwise be out of reach. Fundraising events, grants, and community partnerships all serve as pillars that sustain our programs, and each contribution is a testament to the trust our community places in us. Living in gratitude means acknowledging the privilege of being able to mobilize these resources toward creating positive, lasting change for children who need it most.

    By fostering an attitude of gratitude, I find strength in times of challenge and uncertainty.

    The work can be emotionally demanding, and yet it’s this focus on gratitude that keeps the heart open to the possibility of hope and healing. Recognizing the profound impact our work has on children’s lives, as well as the transformative effect it has on the individuals who serve in this field, brings an immense sense of fulfillment. It reminds me daily that this work is more than a job; it is a calling.

    In December, I will embark on my 35th year in my career working in the field of child abuse/child protection. 

    When I say this work is more than a job but a calling—at least for me it has been—I mean that for some of us this work has chosen us.  At each juncture when I felt like I could move on I was pulled back into this work.  There are others like me.  Others who each time they can close the door, they have walked through to a new opportunity in the field.  I have had the privilege to be a forensic interviewer, a child protection investigator, a foster care manager, advocate, program manager, in home service provider, and Executive Director.  

    November 12th is my 11th anniversary as the Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County.  It has been an incredible honor to have been selected in this role.  I am looking forward to the future and I see great things in the future of this great organization.  I am excited to be the leader of this organization.  It is my privilege to witness the work of law enforcement detectives, of case workers, of prosecutors, of the CAC staff, of everyone on the Jackson County Multidisciplinary Team.  It is some of the greatest acts of empathy, of courage, of compassion, of justice, of integrity I have ever seen.  

    In the end, being the Executive Director of a Children’s Advocacy Center is about leading with empathy, resilience, and gratitude. It’s about being grateful for every opportunity to make a positive difference, no matter how small.

    Living in gratitude transforms not only the way we approach challenges but also the way we celebrate victories, big and small.

    This role has taught me that, while we may not be able to change the past for the children who come to us, we can help them find hope for the future. And for that, I am forever grateful.

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 12

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    Learning from the Past: Building a Culture of Self-Care

    This story is number twelve in Tammi’s series of Thirty Stories from Thirty Years working in child welfare.

    You can read all of the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.  Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the work even when it seemed impossible. 

    This is story number twelve.

    Waiting For The World To Change

    I have been a music lover for most of my life. My taste in music is very eclectic. For me, it is about the memories, feelings, and emotions that are conjured up. I like everything from Reggae to Hip Hop, to Country to Rock to classical, and everything in between. Music helps to put my feelings in order. Music helps me to reconnect with the world. It has always been that way. My happy place, the place where I get re-centered, is sitting by water… preferably the ocean, and listening to music.

    Recently I have rediscovered “Waiting for the World to Change” by John Meyer. It resonates with me –particularly because of the work I have been doing for the last thirty-plus years. It is hard to not think about this song and think about the many children I have worked with or those I did not get the opportunity to work with who are just waiting for the world to change. When I started this work more than 33 years ago, I had a few goals. To change the world. To change my corner of the world. To make my community a little better, a little kinder, a little safer.

    As an adult who has spent the majority if not all my life living in a safe abuse-free world, I am struck by how I have the luxury of being able to wait for the world to change. I can wait. There is no urgency for me as far as my personal life goes. I was not abused as a child. I have a spouse that does not hit me. I was well cared for by my parents and my family. I had my basic needs met. I still have my basic needs met.

    But when I think about the children who are experiencing abuse and think about the stories of the children who I have been so lucky to work with over my career it makes my heart hurt a little bit. My heart hurts for the hundreds of children who never find the opportunity to find safety. Who never feel safe to disclose their abuse.

    My heart aches for the child who told me she had told someone six months ago about what happened and had been waiting for someone to help her. She had been sexually abused by her stepfather and was scared. She told me how she tried different things to make the abuse stop. She thought if she could change something in her life or his the abuse would stop.

    My heart aches for the young adolescent boy whom I went out to follow up on a report called in over the weekend who came running out to my car as I arrived with two black eyes, a broken nose, and a broken arm that was the result of his dad abusing him. He came running to my car with frightened eyes but a wide smile. “I knew something would happen! I knew someone would help me!”

    Those children and their siblings were waiting for something to happen…for something to change in their world that would help them be safe and free from abuse. Someone called in a report. An emergency room doctor did not believe the stories being told to them. A teacher saw behavioral changes in her student and reported her concerns.

    “Me and all my friends
    We’re all misunderstood
    They say we stand for nothing, and
    There’s no way we ever could”

    “Now we see everything that’s going wrong
    With the world ….We just feel like we don’t have the means
    To rise above and beat it”

    “It’s not that we don’t care
    We just know that the fight ain’t fair
    So we keep on waiting (waiting)
    Waiting on the world to change”

    “So we keep on waiting (waiting)
    Waiting on the world to change
    We keep on waiting (waiting)
    Waiting on the world to change”

    “It’s hard to be persistent
    When we’re standing at a distance
    So we keep on waiting (waiting)
    Waiting on the world to change”

    Through the eyes of the children in our world experiencing abuse, this song takes on new meaning. It becomes an anthem. These children do not have the time to wait. It seems dramatic but I guess it kind of is. The luxury of being patient for the world to change does not exist for these kids—for the kids who are experiencing abuse—for the kids struggling to survive. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States has one of the worst records among industrialized nations – losing on average between 4 to 7 children every day to child abuse and neglect. In our country, 4 to 7 children die as a result of abuse and neglect. Those children died waiting for the world to change. It seems dramatic because it is dramatic!

    That young adolescent boy with black eyes, a broken nose, and a broken arm—later tracked me down long after I had worked with his family. He expressed how he knew things were going to get better when he saw me that very first day when I arrived at his home. I was 22 years old when I first met this child. I don’t remember much about that day. I don’t remember how things transpired. We didn’t have cell phones. I was out in the middle of nowhere with no way to call my supervisor or a judge. I had to drive 30 to 45 minutes back to the office to get an order to go back and pick up him and his 4 siblings. I don’t remember any of that. I remember the panic I felt when I realized I was going to have to leave this child and hope when I came back that no one was hurt further. I remember the anger I felt that he was left for the weekend to survive. I remember the gratitude that none of the kids had been hurt further while they waited. I remember wondering how long they had to wait for something to happen that was “enough” to act to provide safety. I remember crying in my car on the way home that night.

    The work we do today on behalf of children who experience abuse changes all of our world tomorrow. We are not powerless. Child abuse happens in silence and isolation. It isn’t visible in our everyday life like many other public health issues. If we want substance abuse rates to come down, we have to stop waiting for the world to change. If we want the homeless rates to come down, we have to stop waiting for the world to change. If we want suicide rates to come down, we have to stop waiting for the world to change. If we want domestic violence rates to come down, we have to stop waiting for the world to change. We know the answer. We know how to change the world for these children, ourselves, and our community. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study tells us. There are high correlations between these social issues, many chronic health issues many mental health issues, and early childhood trauma like abuse left without intervention. We know that by intervening early and close to the event that caused the trauma (abuse) we can mitigate lifetime impacts. When we take into consideration social determinants of health and use the interventions we know to be effective in transforming trauma into healing we ARE changing the world.

    What are you waiting for? We all can do something. We all can do one thing to change the world. One person doesn’t have to do it all. But each person can do something. It can be to volunteer at an organization that serves children who have experienced abuse, like the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County. It can be to provide an investment or financial gift to support the work being done on behalf of children who experience abuse, like the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County. It can be to call the child abuse hotline when you see or hear something about a child being hurt through abuse. You can listen to a child when they tell you they feel uncomfortable around another adult or child. You can pay attention to the physical signs of a child being hurt and act by making a report to the child abuse hotline. You can help provide support and gratitude to the many men and women who work tirelessly every single day to help children find safety and justice after abuse. The list is endless. The possibilities of how you can help are limitless. All these things help to make the vision of communities where children are safe and families are strong a reality.

    Why are you still waiting for the world to change? YOU have the POWER to CHANGE the WORLD.

    This is story #12 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 11

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    Learning from the Past: Building a Culture of Self-Care

    This story is number eleven in Tammi’s series of Thirty Stories from Thirty Years working in child welfare.

    You can read all of the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.  Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the work even when it seemed impossible. 

    This is story number eleven.

    Today I am paying homage to the “Ya-Yas” who were my mentors when I started working as a Child Protection Intake worker in rural Louisiana.

    I guess I should start by defining what a Ya-Ya is for those who did not grow up in the South. Sisterhood is a powerful and empowering community of women who share a deep bond of sisterhood, friendship, and support. Truthfully, not necessarily a Southern thing but perhaps a term that came about after a novel that was written by Rebecca Wells.

    I started in this field as an investigator in a small rural town in Louisiana. We did not have a lot of resources and we did not have a lot of initial training other than those defined in public law (insert here the number that I can’t remember). I learned about genograms and systems theory but very little about how to know when a parent is lying to you about the cause of an injury or how to recognize when a child is scared to death to talk to you or what to do when a parent pulls a shot gun on you on your second report assigned to you to investigate. But I was lucky. I had my Ya Yas ready to step in and help me make my way. I was fortunate to work in that small resource deprived city for ten years. In that ten years one of the things that I had reinforced over and over again is listening to my gut. When my gut told me a child was not safe I listened and asked for help or dug deeper. Sometimes I got a little nudge from those around me. This is something that isn’t addressed in the policies or even the risk and safety assessment models. It is a “when you know, you know” kind of thing or was back then in 90’s. But it isn’t a phenomenon that can be carried out without being based in fact. You can’t just go and remove kids from parents on a gut feeling. The gut feeling is there to guide you.

    Sometime in the early years of my career I caught a case involving a military family. A young Mom and Dad and a child that was preverbal—maybe two. I had been out trying to locate this child for several days. It was a Friday afternoon when I finally caught the Mom by surprise. They lived in a trailer park in a really run down almost unsafe trailer. It was close to base—that trailer park was well known to our office. I was likely out there at least twice a week. This particular time, the mom would not let me in. I could see the child hiding behind her. The dad was the soldier. I had tried to locate him as well. She informed me he was in the field and that she was not letting me in the house and she was not going to let me see the child up close.

    The report was not all that “serious” in nature. Ambiguous at best. A friend called it in. Parents are always yelling at the baby. He doesn’t talk and should be making some attempts. He cries a lot. Child was hit. No context to the hitting. There are probably a hundred of these that are reported in a year. Some get assigned. Some do not.

    In the moment that she refused to let me in and let me see the child up close, my gut kicked in. I personally loved working military cases. There was a safety net. There was never a time you could not locate a solider. The Army always knows where their men are and while they can’t make a spouse comply; they can certainly make the soldier comply and usually through the soldier get the non-military spouse to comply. I did not have a cell phone. It was the pre cell phone era.

    It was 4 in the afternoon on a Friday. I drove directly to the military hospital and plopped into a chair in Ms. Daisy’s office. She was a social worker for the Army. We shared this report. It was late in the evening but she called and got the soldier brought in from the field and within an hour they appeared at the mom appeared at the hospital with the child. I will never forget Daisy having the mom disrobe the child. She got as far as taking his little t shirt off. I was sitting behind sort of in a corner. I took a

    different more relaxed role and let Daisy or whomever the social worker on base was, take the lead. I was getting set up to take notes and I heard Daisy say to the mom “Who beat your child?” I whipped my head up and looked at Daisy. Mom denied the child being beat. However the proof was all over his little trunk.

    In that moment, I have to say I tried to get centered. I had been sitting there in my head so frustrated and quite angry that on a Friday night I was having to tie up this case and it would have been one and done had she let me in the house. I also have to say I had originally pointed my car in the direction of home but the mantra in my head was “your time to contact this child is up. You have to see the child today”. It was true. I was out of time and in order to stay in compliance with policy regarding timeframes I would need to make contact today. So I had angrily u turned and headed back to base. Not what I wanted to do on a Friday night. I wanted to go meet my friends for our standard Friday night meal at the “Catfish Junction”. I wanted to eat fried catfish and relax after being on call all week.

    Daisy’s piercing blue eyes looked from the mom to me. She left her office to talk to the First Sgt out in the hall. The soldier was brought in from the field. The First Sgt stood watch over child and mom and I slipped out into the hall. Within 30 minutes, I had a court order in hand. A foster placement secured, an interview with the mom and a full child abuse work up started in the emergency department of the Army Hospital.

    I wasn’t done that night. The work bled into the early morning as I had to drive out the foster placement about 30 minutes away.

    I remember the next Monday having a wrap up with Daisy and preparing our case for Case Review Team—a Multidisciplinary Team for the Military. She looked at me—handed me a lollipop out of her candy jar. She grabbed one for herself. She leaned up against the front of the desk facing me. Our feet almost touching. Looked at me and asked me how I knew there were so many bruises covered up. I took a minute and said I didn’t. The conversation continued and she said something like, “You know likely that next step saved his life”. It was overwhelming. The loudest voice in my head on Friday was it is nothing. Go home and start over on Monday. You have plans to meet your friends. You deserve a break. It was the smallest voice that said there is a reason for timelines and contact requirements. I mumbled something back to her along the lines of dumb luck. Those piercing blue eyes looked at me and said nonsense! I was so lucky to have her help me to learn all the things. We debriefed that case. We talked about red flags. We talked about the things that pushed me to turn around and come looking for her help to get that baby in to be seen. We talked through the medical information and the findings on the skeletal survey. I stumbled into the right decision that Friday but after my meeting on Monday I had a clear path to recognizing and responding to the red flags or gut feelings the next time.

    There is power in doing this work together and not alone. There is power in taking a multidisciplinary approach to child abuse. There is resiliency in working together on behalf of a child who is at the heart of an abuse report. My Ya Yas taught me that. My experience has proven it over and over again. There are a million stories involving the women I worked with showing me how to recognize a pathway to safety for children that might be unable to tell you they are unsafe. They taught me to slow down. They taught me that I would fail sometimes. They taught me that I did not have all the answers…heck probably not even close to half the answers. They taught me to have a “Growth Mindset”.

    This experience and many like them have shown me that the only way to counter bias is to not work in a vacuum. This experience and many like them taught me it is not important to always have all the answers in thirty minutes but to slow it down and listen. A team is a powerful tool. The most powerful tool in your tool box when investigating child abuse and assessing safety. One of the next powerful tools is to approach every case with a growth mindset…with the intention of listening to someone else’s perceptions, experiences and thoughts. These two things… relying on others for help and guidance and being open to learning new approaches will help to build resilience and avoid burnout. Really it is one thing. Recognizing you do not have and should not do this work alone. There is power in a team approach. There is power in working collaboratively. The outcomes are improved. Not just for the child but for the professional as well.

    This is story #11 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 10

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    Learning from the Past: Building a Culture of Self-Care

    This story is number ten in Tammi’s series of Thirty Stories from Thirty Years working in child welfare.

    You can read all of the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.  Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the work even when it seemed impossible. 

    This is story number ten.

    I recently experienced a significant loss—actually two pretty close to each other.

    My grief process has been a lot of reflection on my childhood and my young adulthood.  Really examining how I got here—to this point in my life.  I will spare you the stories of my youth.  For those of you interested in hearing about my life as a stubborn six-year-old, invite me to coffee, and let’s swap stories.

    Coincidently, I have also recently been digging deep into self-care and institutional influences on self-care and taking a new look at the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES).  Maybe that isn’t a coincidence, it is probably a result of all that self-reflection.

    When you have worked in any field very long, you have this historical perspective that can either help you move to the next level or keep you stagnate under the glass ceiling.  I think this is particularly true in child abuse.  I transitioned into strictly a leadership position 9 years ago.  Before that, I was still working in direct services.   My interest in leaving behind working in direct service work that I loved dearly was due to an observation that there was a lack of longevity among professionals in the field of child abuse.  I wanted to figure out how professionals could do this work and stay in the field for a long time.  I wanted to be part of the solution.

    All of this intersects I promise.  Loss, self-reflection, ACES, and historical knowledge to make story number ten of 30 Stories from 30 Years.

    Sometime in January 1990, I was sitting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in a state training facility in a Public Law 46 or Revised Statue 46 training.  Otherwise known as Core training.  During that time, you received two weeks of training.  Week one was before you could be responsible for performing child abuse investigations or foster care management and then another after you had been working for six months.  I think that the training plan has evolved now into maybe another two or three weeks over three or four years.  I left that training at around 2 on a Friday afternoon.  Returned to my local office on Monday and had three reports sitting in my chair.  This is not unusual at all.  By the time I went to training, I had been observing/shadowing workers for roughly a month.  They had had a vacancy for a while.  This is the story of most child protection offices across the country.  One of those cases was a child with a fairly prominent burn on the outside of their upper arm.  Said child stated to his teacher that his dad had done it.  This young child also told me that Dad did it but said it was an accident.  By the time I reached the home, Dad had been notified by the school that I was on my way.  To answer the unspoken question, yes that was a violation of some rule/law.  But what I will say is that in that moment of stepping out of my car in a literal cow pasture in Pitkin, Louisiana to face a very angry man glaring at me from the front porch my creating genograms in my Core training did not prepare me for this.  I will say that I was probably in my job for six or seven years before I received training in de-escalating angry people and it was because I was selected to go through Mediation training to participate as a Mediator in my local office to help resolve co-worker disputes.  I have always been good at talking to people and finding a middle ground –really one of my favorite things about my job was interacting with angry parents and being able to find a way to work past the anger.  But I can imagine how scary and off-putting that would be to someone who had spent the week drawing genograms and learning system perspectives of childhood abuse.

    The other thing none of my core training in Louisiana or when I retook it ten years later in Colorado prepared me for was the amount of paperwork, how to develop a plan to meet that burdensome responsibility promptly and continue to move forward with subsequently assigned cases and to do all of this while still keeping in mind you are working with hurting people.  Add creating court orders for the first time with essentially no training and testifying in court with no training in some pretty intense situations with some pretty high stakes.  And then add in that over time the pressure intensifies because the court doesn’t always care when you need to take a vacation unless it is convenient to the court.  That is not a judgment on those working inside the court system.  People who are accused of crimes have a right to certain things and time frames.  Those timeframes do not generally bend to allow for vacations, maternity leave, or illness of the witnesses.  It isn’t anyone’s fault.  So much of the requirements of the work are out of the hands of the worker.  Things need to move along.  Parents have a right to a hearing or trial to decide if the child is unsafe in their care.  If you think I am advocating for any of that to change, I am not.  Our system may be flawed but it is one of the only ways to have checks and balances.  Everyone deserves to be heard in a fair and neutral setting where only facts are judged.

    As crucial as our justice system is to find the facts and act accordingly it is just as crucial to have experienced professionals working to keep children safe, to hold offenders accountable, to educate parents on safe ways to parent children—to give them the tools to care for their children in a way that they grow and thrive.  As crucial as it is for the “system” to have documentation of work being done to assess the safety of children and to respond when they are unsafe, it is as critical to provide support and training to professionals on balancing all the priorities and responsibilities that go along with that work.  It is also important to protect those working in this field from the guilt and secondary trauma that is inherent in this work.

    Many people who have experienced childhood abuse or domestic violence are drawn to this work.  We learn so much from those who have lived experience.  But we have not always been good to recognize the trauma can be “triggered” by this work.  We generally in the past have discounted the powerful impact that this work has on those who do the work.  It’s been called Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Secondary Trauma among other things.  There has historically been this thought process of you can’t feel those things and continue in the work.  We are getting better about recognizing the importance of allowing for ways to guard against leaving people in their trauma without a “life saver” so to speak but we have a lot of work to do.  This year I had several traumas.  I did not do as much to take care of myself as I should have and I had a hard time letting others help me.  Why?  Because I felt like I should be doing better at this; like I should have had a handle on it.  And why is that?  Because when I was learning how to be a good “worker” this was what I saw and this is what I emulated.

    When I started this work it was before cell phones.  I had a pager when I was on call but I did not have any way to call for help if I needed it out in the “field”.  In fact, in my office, we had a whiteboard that we signed out on.  90% of the time we signed out “in the field” instead of an address or client’s name.  We could be gone all day.  When I started I was given a black Daytimer calendar, a sheet to track my mileage for reimbursement –because you guessed it in the beginning there were only three state vehicles for the whole office and a stack of forms called ROC notes.  ROC stood for Record of Contacts.  Yep.  We did everything by hand and on paper.  As I write this out, I have to admit I laughed out loud.  It sounds so similar to the “When I was a kid, I had to walk to school in the snow ten miles…. uphill both ways” stories of previous generations.  I type it out, because I have learned to recognize just because I did not have certain protections or guidance, it is not right to force these same practices on those working in the field now.  When we learn better, we should do better.  I am sure I didn’t get that anywhere near the actual quote.

    What I want to say is we can do better for the people tasked with keeping our children safe.  We can grow our expertise and experience in the field by retaining our workforce. But it does take a shift in perspectives.

    Some things are easy and probably on the menu of self-care options for many employees already.

    • You can offer an Employee Assistance Plan that provides for therapeutic interventions when life circumstances are such that we need help processing them.
    • You can offer generous leave plans so employees do not need to choose between health and vacation and don’t have to stress about taking care of their family when they are ill.
    • You can have an open-door policy to help employees reframe self-expectations and expectations others may have for them.
    • Provide relevant training that equips employees to do their job confidently and well.
    • Approach your team with an attitude of gratitude. Nothing does more for morale, motivation, or productivity than being genuinely appreciated and receiving validation that their efforts are being seen.

    Some things may be things that are more difficult depending on whether or not you work in the private sector, for a government entity, or a nonprofit.

    • Pay competitive wages.
    • Offer a benefits package that includes good, affordable health care insurance options and retirement options.
    • Allow for extra leave for bereavement or work with your staff when life situations arise to do what they need to be able to regroup, recover or heal—physically and mentally. Sometimes it is difficult to find the balance between doing this well and also being able to deliver services or complete work.

    Then some things are more along the lines of what I call shared institutional self-care.  This is developing shared values and practices that allow for people to be off work either on vacation, sick, or training without feeling guilt or like they are letting the world down. This is a shared vision of allowing mistakes to be made without also piling on a tremendous amount of shame. This is hard because so much of what we do is high stakes….big things—horrible things can happen when any one of the team is not fully doing their work.  But big things—wonderful things can happen when we allow all of our team to take care of themselves.  Institutional self-care also means that we are all “saving each other from ourselves”.    There is a lot of pressure to get things right.  There is a lot of pressure to do your part.  There is a lot of pressure to accommodate everyone’s needs except your own.  We can help each other remember to extend the same grace to ourselves that we extend to others.  This is a balance.  There is a certain level of self-accountability and maturity that is required to be able to be 120% when someone else can only be 80%.  Or on the other side of the coin, do not consistently give 80% when whoever is taking up the slack may need someone to take up their slack when they are tired.  Balance, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence are required for this shared care to fully be successful.

    Shared care is helping someone to recognize when they may need a break.  I can remember one particularly difficult interview I did with a child whose sibling had died as a result of abuse by their foster parent.  It was one of the worst and most impactful cases of my career.  After the interview, I was so angry because there had been so many reports made.  There was an actual audio recording of the abuse that a neighbor had made.  I was so incredibly angry.  I was able to do the interview.  I was able to do the team debrief.  It was a really good interview.  In my supervisor’s office, I held back tears but what showed was my anger.  She looked at me with her hands crossed and very kindly said “I think you need to take tomorrow off”.  I was indignant that she was not angry.  She went on to say “You cannot control what the foster parent did to this child.  Maybe there were missed opportunities or maybe really all the blame falls on this awful person who hurt this child but you did your best and probably your work will help this woman to be held accountable so that she will not be able to hurt another child.  Anger is not going to help you.”  Once I got past my how dare she not be angry and indignant with me; I realized she was correct.  She told me to learn to recognize when I am burnt out—when I reached my limit.  The point is that if she hadn’t helped me to recognize my burnout and encouraged me to take steps to work through my feelings, I would have burned a lot of bridges, damaged a lot of relationships, and probably left the field feeling angry and disgruntled in the name of something I had no control over.

    I guess my main point is that self-care is not episodic.  It is a way of managing your work all along so that when the “big ugly” thing happens you can adjust and recover.  Not feeling sadness, or not having an impact made by the trauma we are all working in is not a sign of good self-care.

    What if we allowed people to do good work, feel their feelings, recover and redirect after their feelings, and move on to do good work?  What if we appreciated the hard work being done and appreciate how hard it is?  What if we changed what we had control over and trust that others will change what they have control over?  Would that allow our children to have the experienced and skilled professionals they deserve to have to look out for and securing their safety?  Would it allow for accountability for offenders?

    This is story #10 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 9

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    Working Together to Do No Harm

    This story is #9 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 Stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.  Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the work even when it seemed impossible. 

    This is story number nine.

    I want to tell you a story today of a child.

    A child that I knew a long time ago.   She is not a child that had the benefit of receiving services through the CAC.  But she is why I believe in the CAC.  I met her when she was six.  I was 22 and a child protection investigator.  She was the most beautiful blond-haired blue-eyed child I had ever seen.  I wish that I could say that the day I met her was the day that her abuse stopped.  But that is not the case.  I wish that I could say that I was the first child protection worker that she met.  I was not.  When I interviewed her about her abuse, she was silent.  She could talk.  She had ten seconds earlier called me some very colorful names that I am sure she had heard some adult in her life use to describe my comrades, the previous workers who had paraded in and out of her house.  I visited her at her elementary school.  She had been interviewed at school before.  She had been interviewed in her home.  She had been interviewed at other schools by other workers.  The police had interviewed her on scene several times while responding to calls of domestic violence.  She never spoke.  Reports flowed in on a monthly sometimes weekly basis.  We did not have a multi-disciplinary team.  I did not have the support of law enforcement or a medical provider to help me figure out all the pieces of the puzzle.  Instead, I sat in my office reading and re-reading every report and document in her file looking for something—anything that would help me know what to do next.  It was a small community.  Soon the school counselor bypassed the reporting line and called me directly.  She stopped me in the grocery store on the weekends. This child, this beautiful little girl was described as feral in some reports.  She had behavioral issues.  She was aggressive.  She screamed.  She was dirty.  She smelled so bad that her classmates would not sit next to her.  She constantly had bathroom accidents—either because she could not control it or did not want to control it.  She “binged” in the cafeteria because she was starving.

    It took six months to find enough “evidence” that she was at risk and that she and her siblings should be placed in DHS custody.  In time we came to learn that in addition to the years of physical abuse and neglect that she had been sexually abused by multiple family members.  In fact, to this day her case stands out as one of the most heinous abuse cases in my career.

    The last time I saw this child she was 10 years old.  She was getting therapy.  She was in a special foster home.  She had had three psychiatric stays in one of the best treatment centers in the country.  She had blown through too many foster homes to count.   Her story is a long and sad one.  I carry it around in my heart and there are few days that I do not think about her.  Not one incident of abuse committed against her was prosecuted but more importantly even though she came to the attention of the “System” multiple times, the system caused harm when they did not respond in a timely, coordinated way.

    I often wonder “what if”?   What if we had a CAC and a multi-disciplinary team?  Would this child have been returned to her abusive home at age three because a judge did not find sufficient evidence in a hearing to say she was in danger?  Would this child and their family have had the opportunity to move around between parishes as a way to avoid social services?  If we had coordinated services for this child, would we have had a clear social history, a thorough mental health assessment, a clear disclosure of abuse early on through a proper forensic interview and would those efforts secure her safety and help provide a path toward healing?

    In 2022, we know better, and we do better.  I believe so strongly in the work done on behalf of the children who experience abuse in our community by the CAC and by the Jackson County Multidisciplinary Team.  I believe in it because I have done the work without the benefit of this model.

    The coordination of care provided through the CAC model provides better outcomes for the system, for the child and for the families we work with.  It also provides a layer of protection for those doing the work.  You are not alone and not being alone is one big factor in guarding yourself against vicarious trauma.

    This is story #9 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 8

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    Lessons Learned from an Unexpected Teacher

    This story is #8 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 Stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.  Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the work even when it seemed impossible. 

    This is story number Eight.

    I love sharing stories from when I was working in the “field” in the beginning of my career.

    They remind me of how each child I worked with and each situation I encountered helped not only develop my philosophy in appropriate intervention in child abuse but also just who I have become as a person, as leader, and as a parent.

    Our experiences help to shape who we are—both the good and the bad.  They help us to set boundaries and help to set limits on what we will “accept” and what we will not when interacting with the world around us.

    One of those shaping experiences for me was while working with a young man.  He was one of a sibling group of two.  I worked with both he and his sister.  They were both in their teens.  They had both blown through so many foster and residential placements by the time I inherited their case and there were not many options left.  I barely remember the girl.  I remember her name but for some reason I don’t remember as much about her personally.  She was quiet.  He was labeled aggressive.  Maybe I remember him more because he was a challenge.

    He was a tall young man.  While he had been aggressive and argumentative with most who interacted with him. He was not that way with me.  By the time I inherited his case he had been in foster care for five plus years and had blown through over 15 to 20 placements.  He was around 15 when I started working with him.  I don’t remember his exact age.  I remember his whit.  I remember his persistence.  I remember his smile that when he chose to use would light up the room.  I also remember that I was tasked with the last ditch effort to get this child and his sister home with their mom.

    I was working in Louisiana.  The mom had moved to Houston, Texas.  While not that far apart in miles, it would take moving half the world in red tape and paperwork to reunite this young man with him mom after five years of mom doing no work on her treatment plan.  Now in present time, we would not have held those children in foster care so long without either returning home or terminating parental rights so that they could be adopted.  Then…in the early nineties, we would sometimes spend years trying to coax a parent into engaging in a treatment plan.  In hindsight, our hands were tied from the very beginning.  Mom had the power and she chose not to exert it.  She could have done one thing on that treatment plan like visit regularly or take a parenting class and she would have had these kids returned.  The problem was that she never engaged.  Ever.  These children were removed because her neglect put them in danger.  Her lack of engagement with her children was the reason a case had opened in the first place.  The children were removed because they were found wondering on the military base alone at 2:00 a.m. in the morning.  And it wasn’t the first time.  The children missed school all the time.  They were not cared for.  They were hungry.  Mom was in the Army.  Her command got involved and she chose to be chaptered out (for civilians that means kicked out).  She had a drug problem.  She was not a good soldier.  She was not a good mother.  Her kids were found half naked in the streets before they were old enough to ride a bike well.

    We were able to get him placed in a residential placement twenty minutes from his mother’s apartment in Katy Texas. I remember how hopeful he was.  As we entered the outskirts of the city, I remember him gasping “Miss Tammi, it looks like heaven”.  I looked over at him and he was smiling—so happy.  I never knew if it looked like heaven because of how the buildings rose out of the smog or if it looked like heaven because he was close to his mom.  Sadly, mom never visited him.  I made the trek every month round trip eight hours to visit with him.  She never showed up.  I went by her address and left a card –she had a caseworker assigned to her from her local Child Protection Agency but she was never home and never engaged.  I think I may have talked to her once or twice.  I barely remember her.

    I remember being so angry at her that I had to deal with the angry outburst and begging for placements to keep him and give him another chance.  All the while, she remained absent and uninterested.

    Every month, he would greet me as I came into the facility.  Smiling—asking me if I had brought him anything from McDonald’s.  Sometimes the answer was yes.  Other times it was no.  He never got to leave the facility because he was always so angry he could not keep his behavior in check enough to earn privileges.

    I don’t know what happened to this young man.  I left the foster care unit.  His case was assigned to a new worker.  He aged out of foster care.

    Why is this story number eight?  One without what I would call a happy ending or even closure.  I learned a lot from this young man.  I learned that if you treat people with respect and dignity, you are not likely to get the brunt of their anger.  I never got the anger or the aggression.  I always got the bright 1000 watt smile.  I asked him why he couldn’t flash that smile and show others his very engaging personality.  He told me no one ever gave him a chance.

    I also learned the hard reality that while we want to give every child a fairy tale childhood, that is not likely to happen.  Part two of this particular lesson was that if we make the decision to remove a child from their parent then we need to make sure that there are no other options and that we have a plan that is viable for that child’s sustained stability.

    This “case” also taught me that we can want good things for kids in foster care but if we can’t get the parent engaged early on, it is not likely that good things will happen.  Even in the early to mid-nineties and even in my very rural community, we were doing family centered practice.  We were required to create treatment plans with the families we worked with.  We identified the reason a child came into care and the problems that existed together with the family and came up with strategic ways to solve the issues that kept the child from returning home.  In this case, we somehow did not get total engagement in the treatment plan even though she helped create it.  In the end, the key for children to return home lies with our ability to work with and engage with the parent.

    How does this fit in with the building resiliency or self-care?  I think it shows we have to recognize we are all human and all that can be asked of us as individuals is to show up and approach this work with humility, compassion, empathy, and grace.  Humility so that we are able to continually learn from people we come in contact with….from those with lots of credentials and years of experience, from those new to the work and most importantly from the children and families we work with; after all they are the experts in the impact and effectiveness of our collective and individual work after abuse.  I was once told no one will care what you know until they know how much you care.  I don’t remember who said this originally but it certainly struck a chord when it was shared with me.  Compassion and empathy are such key components to engaging parents and children in treatment.  Grace!  We need to extend grace to everyone on our team that we work alongside.  We will make mistakes.  We will not all approach this work with the same agenda or perspective.  But we do need to recover from those mistakes.  We need to learn from hearing someone else’s perspective.  And in order to find sustainability in this work, we really need to work together for better outcomes for children.  One person cannot bear all the responsibility for securing safety and finding recovery for children after they experience abuse.  It takes us all.

    This is story # 8 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 7

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    Oh The Places You Will Go When You Know What You Won’t Do!

    This story is #7 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 Stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.  Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the work even when it seemed impossible. 

    This is story number seven.

    Somewhere in my early twenties I was lucky enough to stumble upon my mission.

    I say stumble upon as it was through a series of decisions that I thought would take me in one direction that definitely took me in the total opposite direction.

    I declared my major early in my first semester of college.  I was going to be a Psychologist. I wanted to help people.  I had finished two semesters of school and still felt like I was on the right path.  In my third semester, there was a required class on behavioral modification techniques.  Or at least I think that was what it was about.  After sitting through the first class I went straight to my advisor’s office and sat in the hallway waiting for him to get into his office.  I sat on that hard, cold, tiled floor with my back against the dingy wall sipping on a cold Dr. Pepper and eating Hot Fries I had purchased out of the vending machine at the end of the hall.  I sat there for about an hour and a half.  I wanted to change my major and needed to figure out how to do that quickly without losing any credits.  In fact I wanted to drop the behavioral mod class immediately.  In that first class, the instructor was going over the syllabus and was explaining that 50% of your grade was going to come from lab work.  In this lab work you had one mission, to train a little white lab mouse to go through a wooden maze.  You would do a series of experiments using different techniques and your grade would come at the end of the semester and would be based on whether or not your mouse could successfully make it through the maze to the cheese.  Right then I was pretty sure this class was not going to help me help people.  I was certain I would never pass the class.  AND I absolutely knew that I did not want to test out how electric shock could be used for behavior modification with white lab mice. I also knew that I never ever wanted to hear about how it was used on people to manage behavioral changes.

    My advisor, who didn’t know my name or really anything about me, listened to me for a few minutes.  He sort of chuckled and told me to wait until the middle of the class before I made up my mind.  He really didn’t know me!  I made up my mind and there was little that was going to change my mind.  I told him I didn’t want to waste time or pull my GPA down when I failed the class.  He suggested Social Work.  I could get my BSW and graduate on time without losing any credits.  My sister was in the Social Work program at the same school.  I told him to sign me up!

    That decision propelled me down a different path.  I became intrigued by the subject of child abuse.  I remember sitting in my very first child abuse class.  I was 19 and the class was large maybe 50 people.  I remember being riveted by the class lectures.  I remember looking around and not seeing anyone else reacting and wondering how is it that this is going on around me and I know nothing about it.  Why isn’t any one doing anything to stop it?  I literally had never had anyone up to that point talk to me about child abuse.  I read a couple of magazine articles but I never thought it was happening around me to people I knew.

    I completed an internship on a cutting edge child abuse team at the Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office.  I knew that this work was my thing—was my purpose.  That decision would take me on path that would cross paths with some of the most compassionate, passionate, empathetic and highly skilled professionals in the field.  I feel so lucky to have been so patient waiting on the floor in front of the office of someone who even though his actions had such a huge impact on my life—I cannot remember his name.

    I am now, well….let just say much older than 19.  I am still amazed when I look around and see that very few people really know anything about child abuse.  It has been more than 30 years since I sat in that auditorium in Monroe, Louisiana learning about what child abuse looks like and hearing about the societal issues that lead to child abuse. I have spent a lot of energy learning as much as I could about child abuse, its impact on the child, on the community and on the world.

    Here are the top five things I want people to know about child abuse.

    1. It is a community problem.  It is our business.  It is not something to be kept quiet and swept under a rug or locked in a closet.  I hear people complaining about the amount of money our country puts into the prison system.  I hear people complaining about the rising costs of medical care.  I hear people complaining about how much money our country spends on mental health and the treatment of substance abuse problems.  Guess what?  These costs will continue to rise until as a community we decide that intervening in child abuse is a priority.
    2. We, as individuals, are not helpless against child abuse. There are many things we can do to help address the problem of child abuse.  We can make a report when we see a child mistreated.  We can let our elected officials know that we want our children protected and we want them to be a priority.  We can take a class to educate ourselves on how to identify and respond to child abuse.  (The CAC offers a great child sexual abuse prevention class called Stewards of Children.  Call and get registered!).  We can make a donation to an organization that provides services to children who have been abused to insure that every child that needs services can access services.
    3. Children are not abused because they “asked for it”. No matter what their behavior, violence is not the “fix”.  Fill your “parenting toolbox” with something other than physical violence.  Discipline does not have to hurt to work.
    4. In every community, every neighborhood, and every zip code there are children being abused.  Do not fool yourself into thinking otherwise.  People who society has labeled as successful can abuse children.  People who have great jobs, who dress nice, who drive fancy cars are also capable of abusing children.  It is not something that only happens in low income high risk neighborhoods.
    5. EVERY SINGLE child deserves to be safe. The one that acts out with violence and that is disrespectful.  The one that smells bad and wears tattered clothing.  The one that is slow to learn.  The one that cries all the time.  The one that devours your personal space.  The one that pushes you away.  The one that medicates herself with drugs.  The one that mutilates himself.  The one that is a chronic runaway. The child who is of color. The child who is LGBTQ+.  ALL children have a basic right to be free and safe from abuse of all types.

    The problem of child abuse is never going to be completely resolved until we all do our part to address it in our everyday lives.  There is a child somewhere depending on you to do something.  What will your something be?  Will you volunteer at the Children’s Advocacy Center or some other agency that serves child abuse victims?  Will you write a check to the Children’s Advocacy Center to help a child in his recovery from the trauma caused by abuse?  Will you set aside two and half hours to take Stewards of Children at the Children’s Advocacy Center to learn about recognizing and responding to child abuse?  How can I support you in your journey to keep the children of Jackson County safe from abuse?

    This is story # 7 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 6

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    When Vicarious Trauma Tricks you into Believing the Lies

    This story is #6 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 Stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    This series is a reflection over a 30 plus year career in child abuse interventions.

    Some are stories that help to understand real life impacts of that career and vicarious trauma.  Some stories are just that.  Stories of pivotal moments in that career that propelled me to continue the work even when it seemed impossible.  This is story number six.

    I worked in this field a really long time before my husband and I had our son.  I had worked in this field a really long time before I even got married.  Both of those events changed how I was able to manage to continue in this field.

    I can pin point two really specific events after my son was born that totally changed not just how I thought about things but really changed my approach to this work and how I interact with and supervise staff.  I didn’t know it then but it would become part of the frame work that would build my leadership philosophy.

    The first was about a week after I returned to work after my maternity leave.  I was a Program Manager and a Forensic Interviewer.  It would have been like any other day.  I was busy.  While people had “warned” me that everything would change after my son was born.  I had never really considered the depth of what that meant.  I knew about the no sleep, no alone time, and even had considered how it might change my husband’s and my relationship.  But I had never considered how vicarious trauma would creep in and impact who I was.  The first clue happened while I was doing an interview.  It came not in waves but in one strong sucker punch.  It was totally unexpected.  And it almost brought me to my knees.  It was not the first interview I had done after I had returned to work but it was the first interview of a boy that I had conducted.  He was about 4.  He had dark hair and a fair complexion like my son.  I was interviewing him about sexual abuse.  We were through most of the interview and I was just gathering details of his experience when suddenly my vision started to narrow.  I focused on his face and what he was saying and continued to prompt for more information.  In my mind I was not interviewing a stranger.  I began to hear what I thought my son’s voice would sound like. It was the most bizarre experience I had up to that point in my life.   I somehow made it through that interview and was able to wrap up.  I ducked my head into the room where the law enforcement detective was watching to let him know I would be back in a second for the wrap up.  I walked the child back to his parent.  I went straight to the bathroom and pulled myself together.  Refocused. Stared in the mirror at myself. It felt like I was there forever but it must have only been a minute or two.  We finished our post interview wrap up, met with the mom and made plans for next steps.  It never happened again but that interview was one of the most difficult interviews I have ever completed.  It didn’t go to court.  The child’s disclosure was strong and the offender took a plea.  I have never even told anyone about what happened that day except in passing and only to say it was hard to interview after being gone for two months.  However, this experience for sure was with me every day for the rest of my time as an interviewer.  It also helped me to be able to empathize with several interviewers who I supervised later who were struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder triggers.

    The second event was later when my son was two and half and toddling.  We lived in a house with rustic “cabin” wood stairs that went to the basement.  We had gates up but he and I were sitting on the stair case playing with dinosaurs. We had been practicing walking down the stairs. We got up to get a snack.  I stood up and turned around and down the stairs he tumbled.  He got a cut above his eye. Now that scar is covered by his eyebrows.  He cried so much and there was so much blood coming out of that ½ inch cut.  I was panicked.  I called a friend.  She was one of the forensic nurses that worked with me.  She could hear my distress and assured me she was on her way.  She brought her husband who was with the fire department.  While they were on their way over, my son had cried himself to sleep.  I immediately woke him up as I was certain he had a head injury. He began screaming again. They looked him over.  He smiled at them and laughed. He was being adorable. He was totally fine.  They put a little medical tape over the cut to help it closed.  Both had years of experience providing emergency medical care.  I got physically ill.  I slept with him that night and every night for a week after that.  I watched him closely.  My friend kept telling me kids fall all the time.  He will be fine.  Finally she asked why are you so upset?  I looked at her and said….this is the story we always hear.  She asked me to clarify.  We get a call.  Child is rushed to emergency department. Child rolled off the changing table or down four stairs.  Child has a head injury.  Child dies.  This is the story.  She reminded me that not every child that falls sustains a head injury.  And she reminded me that the stories we hear are generally not the truth.  The child was shook …or thrown.  They did not fall down four steps.   I cried every time I looked at that tape over his eye.  We have tons of pictures with that tape on his eye.  It was Halloween week.  That year, he was Superman with medical tape over this eye.  My eyes still tear up when I see those pictures. I can also laugh with my nurse friend Val and her husband Jeff at how crazy I was and that they needed to take care of me more than my son.   In fact, we just reminisced about this in our last phone call.

    I tell those stories to show that vicarious trauma is going to hit you if you work in a field that intervenes in trauma.  It isn’t an if question.  It is a when question.  You can be prepared.  You can recognize it in others.  You can have vast knowledge in trauma and its impact. You may still have a harder time in the middle of it recognizing it in yourself.  Listen to others who may try to guide you.  Do not brush it off.  If you don’t at least identify it and have a plan in place to deal with it, it will only lead to more frequent episodes. It doesn’t mean you are weak.  It doesn’t mean you are not good at your job.  It doesn’t mean you can’t do this work.  It does mean you are human.

    I am pretty sure that people who do not do this work also have “triggers” to things that present as trauma.  Sometime in the last ten to fifteen years in “caring” or “helping” professions there has been more of a focus on taking care of ourselves.  But really we need to extend that to all who experience trauma triggers—both those traumas that happen to us and those we experience vicariously.  Trauma is all around us.  We bump into people every day who are triggered by trauma.  I have been lucky enough to have always surrounded myself by people who understood my “bad” behavior is mostly attached to the stories I hear and to my own personal traumas. I say bad behavior as it can sometime look like behavior that is not generally acceptable. (You see them in the grocery story…yelling at some poor employee who happened to be in their path because they do not have the right brand of peanut butter or that person that is rude to you for no reason—you know what I am talking about, right?) I try to pay that “grace” that was extended to me forward.  In COVID, I have begun to realize that most of us are not good at taking care of ourselves and finding a work-life balance.  Particularly those who work in the helping professions.  I had a friend that reminded me recently, that we need to put on our oxygen masks first or we are useless to others because we have no air left to give.

    The next natural question is how do you strike that balance?  I can’t answer that question for you, only myself.  It is intensely personal.  What works for one does not work for all.  I find myself doing breathing exercises more during the day.  (My smart watch reminds me to—I would probably forget otherwise). I close my door and infuse the air with my favorite essential oil.  I eat dinner with my family.  I have coffee or lunch with my friends as often as I can.  I have a dog that helps me on a particularly bad day.  I get up and move around.  Sometimes I play Cookie Jam on my phone or when the weather is right I take a hike or walk with my son.  Small things every day help in the overall big picture.  Every day it becomes easier and easier.  What are you doing to take care of yourself?

    This is story # 6 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 5

    Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 5

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    The Secondary Trauma Quagmire

    This is story # 5 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    Secondary trauma can change you.

    It can change how you view the world.  It can change how you feel.  It can change how you dream.  That is even if you are educated on secondary trauma and look for the signs and exercise self-care.  Sometimes it is the reflecting back that helps you put it to rest.

    My first job in child protection was on a crisis intervention team.  We investigated child abuse reports.  It was prior to a change in perspective in the field.  We were definitely doing investigations versus assessments. 

    There were levels assigned to each report that indicated the number of steps that needed to be completed and the number of people that needed to be talked to in the case.  The paperwork increased with an increased level of risk and increased again if it was found to be true neglect or abuse.  In some ways, the things that were apparent got more attention.  The ones that were grey or murky could be closed without the full story being told.  In those cases, they usually came back multiple times, like a tantruming toddler needing attention.  

    Most of the really serious cases that I worked either came out of nowhere, meaning no reports made in the past or they were one of those murky grey cases where there had been multiple low-level neglect reports that were closed with no finding for abuse.

    In about the second year of my career, I was assigned one of those cases with no history that turned out to be a pretty significant, chronic, heinous abuse case that had a great impact on me.  I learned a tremendous amount about myself, about building resiliency, about listening to the silence that is part of many abuse cases. 

    Silence because children refuse to talk and sometimes silence because they no longer have the ability to talk.  In this particular case, it was the latter. 

    The child was four or five.  He presented to the base hospital with a head injury.  He had been accidentally run over by a car by a parent.  On face value, tragic.  The call came in late to me.  Both in time of day, but also in the process.  In the emergency department, the on-call pediatrician also noted multiple injuries and bruises of various aging all over this young child’s body.  The child had to be medevacked to a hospital in a nearby town because the military hospital was not equipped to handle the level of the head trauma. 

    By the time I got the call, the child had been moved to the other hospital, the parents went with the child and had not been questioned by anyone regarding the current injury or the older injuries. 

    The child was unconscious and in critical condition.  It is never easy for an investigation to catch up to real-time once you are behind.  It is also never easy to have to call a judge in the middle of the night and ask for an order of protection for a child and not have all the facts yet.  Lucky for me, our process in these circumstances was to have a supervisor make that call.  We were lucky and were able to get that order.  Due to the gravity of the case, we had to get the orders served right away at the hospital and to the parents.  Those were the times you were thankful for the military cases, as it was much easier to make all that happen within the structure of that system.

    Rather than go into the details of this case, what I will say is that as a young worker, a young adult, and newly coming out of my sheltered existence, this case hit me very hard. 

    I held onto the case well past the sixty days allowed.  I was investigating this case and every new fact brought on new abuse allegations.

    This unconscious child would utter clues.  They were garbled.  Out of context.  As he became more fully awake and regained some speech, they became unimaginable and fantastical.  Some allegations against parents.  Some involving others.  One of those others was a pediatrician in another state.    

    Each new day brought on a new horror that this child had lived through.  Sexual abuse, physical abuse, torture, emotional abuse…. Really a classic target child.  It crossed state lines.  

    I got on a quest.  Which is always dangerous in the child protection world.  I was going to make everything right for this child.  I was going to track down every allegation.  Prove or disprove it.  I was going to make this child’s future secure from abuse.  I was not alone. 

    The pediatrician who had not reported timely also spent a fair amount of time trying to right his mistake.  He wrote a letter of commendation to go in my personnel file for the professional and thorough way I went above and beyond to protect this child.  Which to be honest, did as much to make me angry as it did to make me feel good.  I was offended as I felt like I handled every case that way.  I did not want to be part of the process to forgive his transgression of not calling the report in.  He was very aggressive and opinionated and now he was caught in the same lens of judgment that he cast on others and I was not sure I wanted to relieve him of that.

    What my quest and misplaced anger looked like was me sitting in my office, crying as I wrote up my case notes.  Interviewing every person I could find that had ever had contact with this child.  Smoking outsides fuming to anyone who would listen about the injustice of the other state for not pulling the license of the pediatrician who I had initiated a report against.  And more crying in my office at the thought of interviewing the little child again based on information coming from statements of the siblings. 

    In that time, caseworkers were not supposed to cry.

    If you cried or felt things, then you were not able to do the job in an unbiased manner.  You were not tough enough to do the job.  There was no such thing as compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, or vicarious trauma.  Those were concepts that came much later.  There was no discussion about self-care. 

    Most of the workers tended to do things together socially as we no longer had friends outside “the system”.  We were jaded.  We did the exact opposite of what is advised now.  We drank together.  We smoked our stress away.  Back then you could even smoke in your office.  Seems absolutely crazy to think back on.  Your coworkers became like family because no one else understood.  You became inundated with the very thing you were trying to escape.

    My quest ended when my supervisor came into my office and I was telling her of the latest allegation that needed to be investigated. She put her hand up telling me to stop.  I fell silent.  She looked at me and said, “This is finished—close out your case and get your paperwork to me by the end of the week.” 

    I sputtered all the reasons why I should not…with tears being held back as much as I could.  She then shared some wisdom with me from her many years of child protection.  She said sometimes it takes years to know all the allegations of abuse perpetrated on a child.  Sometimes you never know.  There are other children who need your expertise.  This child is safe in a foster home with parents who want to adopt him.  You have done all that you can.

    I went home that night fuming.  I wrote out my notes in front of the TV and cried some more.  I went in the next day and turned over my case file.  I was exhausted.  She hugged me.  By noon I had two more cases that needed to be investigated. 

    Later, some of us chuckled a bit about the doctor trying to relieve his guilt by praising my work.  We were hardcore.  We were cynical.  Now looking back, he was probably sincere.  Maybe.

    This work changes you.  You have choices to make about how it changes you.  Does it make you angry?  Does it make you hostile?  Or depressed?  Helpless? 

    There are a couple of “takeaways” in this story. 

    As a supervisor, know when to step in and guide your staff.  As a professional working in the field, learn your limits, and recognize when you stray too far from “center”.  Know when you have done all that you can do. There are some really “dark” secrets in this world.  Some of us have the responsibility to hear these secrets.  That responsibility is an honor.  You have been deemed trustworthy to hear the secret. 

    But this is about building resiliency.  How do you build resiliency without building tolerance and immunity?

    One way is when you lose your way and become too immersed, listen to the wise person who points that out to you.  Another way is to own your feelings.  Do not act like you don’t have a response to the terrible things you hear or see.  Choose healthy habits to deal with those feelings.  Follow good nutrition guidelines.  Exercise.  Seek therapy.  This will be a repeated theme throughout these stories.  Sometimes you get so buried in your work, the sadness, the enormity of it; that you cannot see the impact it is having on you.  Surround yourself with people you trust, who you will listen to, and who will care enough to point it out to you when you have reached your limit and need to recharge or change your course. (Doing this of course while maintaining confidentiality)

    Earlier I mentioned this work changes you.  It will do that for sure.  I am not the same person I was at 21 when I started working in this field.  Part of self-care is, in a career where so much is out of your control, control what you can.  You cannot control that the work will change you, but you can control how you integrate those changes.  Use your experiences to be grateful for your own life.  If you experienced abuse and can’t be grateful for your childhood, be grateful that you were strong enough to survive.  Be more compassionate.  Trauma explains a lot of our unacceptable behavior, but it is still unacceptable behavior.  Give yourself the gift of forgiveness for those behaviors and learn your triggers.   Show compassion, when you can, to yourself and to those around you.  Do the best you can—every day. 

    Listen.  Listen to those who guide you out of the quagmire of secondary trauma and allow them to help you find safety. 

    This is story # 5 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #ThirtyFromThirty #ACareerInChildProtection

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  • Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 4

    Thirty Stories from Thirty Years: Story Number 4

    30 Stories in 30 Years. A Career in Child Protection. Blog.

    By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of The Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

    The Treasures I Carry with Me

    My blog series on building resiliency got put on the back burner as we all have had our hands full dealing with COVID 19. I, like you, am trying to return to some sort of normalcy. 

    In that vein, here is story #4. 

    This blog series is intended to be less about the journey shared in the stories told and more about the resiliency built through each experience — in hopes of helping others with a passion for protecting children and addressing child abuse to find their own resiliency.

    You can read all the stories here.

    When I started out as a caseworker, I have to be honest, I thought there would be more “thank yous” and gratitude.  Perhaps not from parents — but from someone.  Here thirty years later, I can maybe count the thank-yous received on one….maybe two hands. 

    Those two words are not something you hear frequently when you work in a field that is inundated with trauma.

    But if you look, you can SEE them.   If you are aware, you can FEEL them.  AND occasionally, they come from out of nowhere.  The irony is that I have never been good at accepting thank yous…really compliments of any kind.  I was raised to be humble.  Humble somehow equated to this weird shy brush off and redirection anytime anyone gave me a compliment or said thank you. 

    I have learned over the span of my career to hold on to those expressions of gratitude.  To reflect back on them when I am feeling overwhelmed or sad. 

    Those sweet little treasures of appreciation are a big part of my resiliency and self-care.

    There are a few moments in my career that I hold onto as testaments to me that what I do now and what I have done in the past matters.  They came later in my career.  Not surprisingly, after I left my role as a caseworker behind.

    Have you ever noticed that when you need to hear something or feel validated the universe has a weird habit of almost always delivering that to you wrapped up in a bow?  And really this can happen in all walks of life.  We need to be still.  We need to be alert.  If we are not, we can miss it.  Sometimes it is subtle reassurance and sometimes it is in your face!

    I was a new mother and working many hours.  My husband, at that time, traveled a lot for his work.  My toddler son was spending large amounts of time in daycare and with the babysitter.  I was also at a point in my career where I was doing both administrative work and still doing forensic interviews.  Some days there was just a whirlwind of stress and chaos.

    This particular day was just before Halloween.  I ran into Big Lots to buy some decorations to put up at home on my way to pick up my son.  Big Lots had just opened a store on the way to my son’s daycare.  It still had that brand-new look and all the shelves were organized.  I picked up a few things I was pretty sure would delight my son.

    I handed the cashier my card to pay for my purchases.  She read the card.  She stopped and stared at me.  Like one of those full-on stares into my eyes.  It seemed like an eternity.  Probably was like five seconds.  Her eyes welled up with tears.  She quietly whispered; I know you.

    There was a line of people waiting to pay for their newfound treasures.  I had gotten this before.  I always let people figure out where they know me from. They usually list church, or say, “You’re so and so’s friend.”  I usually just say something like, “I just have one of those faces” or “I don’t think I know them.”  Or some version of this.  Usually, I walk off before it dawns on them where they know me from.

    I want people to have their peace.  To know their stories are kept confidential.

    She insisted.  When she handed me my card back, she grabbed my hand and held it. I looked up at her and she was full-on crying at this point. She then said, “Thank you”.  I smiled and sort of nodded my head.  She then said, “You saved my daughter’s life and I will always be thankful.”  I stood there a moment longer.  She told me that she needed me to know that her daughter was okay.  She was okay and both of them were safe now.  I smiled awkwardly and said I was so glad.

    I then walked out to my truck and full-on cried.  I did not remember her daughter.  I did not remember her mom.  It is too much of a burden to remember all the stories, but you do carry their trauma.

    I cried mostly because I felt guilty for not remembering.  I cried because I felt guilty about being away from my son so much.  I cried because I was overwhelmed by her gratitude.  I cried because that day she helped me identify my value.

    I cried because I knew this would be one of those treasures I would need to remember when I felt I could no longer carry the burdens of my job.

    Another more recent affirmation came around Christmas time a few months ago.  My husband called me to tell me he had gotten a weird call from someone who said I was their caseworker when he was a kid.  He asked my husband to tell me “thank you.”  He did not leave a number.  He left a name, but it was not the name he went by as a child when I knew him.  I was stunned.  I had not heard from this child since 1996 or 97.

    His family was not an easy family to work with.  It was this weird out of nowhere call.  I hauled this kid all over the state of Louisiana.  He blew out of placements.  His siblings blew out of placements.  Memories of working with this child, his humor, his stubbornness, his quirky smile, his pain-filled eyes flashed through me like bolts of lightning.   

    I did end up tracking down a number and talking to him. (Actually, give credit where credit is due.  My husband did the detective work and found a number.)  Not to hear thank you, but to confirm that he was okay and is doing alright in life. 

    Another treasure to carry with me when I feel I can no longer carry the burdens of my job.

    If you do this work those treasures are there.  Look for them.  When I left my last job to move to beautiful Oregon to take my dream job, my colleagues threw me a going-away party.  Two things stood out for me.  And they were not expected and not something I had ever even really thought two seconds about. 

    One, a DHS supervisor came to me to thank me for helping her when she was a new supervisor trying to find her way.  She actually pulled me away from the party to an interview room…which seemed somehow fitting to end my career in the “small room”.   She had a hard time learning her supervisory skills.  There were a lot of complaints by both our partners and her staff.  I remember meeting with her a couple of times to talk about things.  I actually felt bad about having to have those conversations as they were not easy.  She felt supported and enough to thank me. 

    The other standout from my “going away” party I remembered clearly when one of my colleagues brought it to my attention.  There was a really bad case being handled at the Center.  I won’t go into the details of the case, but there was a lot of disagreement between supervisors and detectives and caseworkers on how to handle the case. 

    Something went really wrong.  I was a supervisor by then and I was not “working with” the team but had walked in to check on how I could be helpful and to check on what was currently happening.  The family had been at the Center all day.  By now it was 5 pm and I was trying to figure out how to plan for staff and for childcare for my own son — as it was clear no one was going home soon.  I was informed of the tragedy and there was a lot of anger and accusations being thrown around about who had let this tragic ending play out.  I quietly said, “None of this is helpful.  No one wanted this to happen and everyone was following policy.  Let’s focus on what is next.” 

    I left the room because I felt like I may have crossed the lines with some people I liked very much.  I stayed the entire night to support staff and the team.  I stayed busy sitting with children and calling in other team partners.  One of the team from that night told me at my going away party that my comments and “leadership” changed the conversation and refocused the team on helping the family and those children. 

    That little treasure has helped me feel confident in many situations that are uncomfortable. 

    These happen to be “my little treasures”.  Everyone has them.  This work is hard. 

    Sometimes you will have a child thank you but usually not, as they don’t always understand the magnitude of what you are doing to help them.  They are steeped in trauma and focused on surviving.  The parents won’t always say thank you because they are not happy, generally speaking, with the system being involved.  Sometimes your team will not say thank you because of their own secondary trauma, other stresses, or the laser focus on their case and wanting good outcomes. 

    I carry these little treasures in my heart to remind me of why I do this incredibly difficult work.  Find your treasures. I bet you have already had these moments happen in your career.  

    Be still.  Be alert.  Don’t miss them.  They will carry you through.

    This is story #4 in Tammi Pitzen’s series of 30 stories from her 30 years working in child welfare.

    You can read all the stories here.

    #ThirtyStoriesFromThirtyYears #30From30 #ACareerInChildProtection

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