Residential Child Care Licensing investigates and
regulates any operation that cares for foster children.
So we license the facility and they provide care to
foster children. And by definition, the foster children
have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect.
So that set-up population is very different from kids in
day care. One, the age range goes from zero to seventeen,
to the types of things they've endured and are
dealing with, whether it be trust issues or diagnosis.
Behavioral issues require a special sort of approach
and treatment and understanding.
There are two basic jobs in licensing. One is being an
inspector and the other job is being an investigator.
An investigator primarily investigates allegations of
abuse, neglect or exploitation at operations. An inspector
has a little bit of a different job. They do some
investigations, however, they also provide feedback
to operations. They walk them through from the actual
permit phase all the way through an operating phase and
ensure that they're following minimum standards and the law.
Everybody's working for the safety of the
children but as an inspector, we concentrate more on the
operations and the foster home's meeting the minimum
standards requirement the state has put forward.
The minimum standards rules are basically in place in
order to keep children safe. That's what they're all about.
And so these rules basically tell the providers the
baseline requirements for providing care for these children.
At the actual point of going to the operation or the
foster home, basically, we introduce ourselves, we explain
why we're there and then we commence with the investigation
or the inspection which would be walk-through inspections,
Checking records, interviewing staff members or foster parents,
or the children that live in the foster home or the operation,
and then at the end we will talk to the operation personnel,
the staff director, and explain to them what our findings
have been. Same with the foster home, we explain to the foster
parents what we have found, what they do good, maybe we could
add some possible suggestions, what we call
"technical assistance", to make their operation or their
home better.
If we find a situation that we find to be abuse or neglect,
our first priority is getting those children in a
safer environment. We also, since we are the monitors or
inspectors, we would make a report to Statewide Intake for
an abuse/neglect investigator to investigate the
situation further.
We get an intake through a computer-based system.
Thank you for holding, this is Emily,
may I have your name?
That intake has been assigned to us an investigator.
We read the intake, we assess risks in the intake. If
there's a need for a safety plan we will call the operation
to get a safety plan to ensure the safety of that child or
any children at the operation. We do go out to the facility
or the operation and in some cases it could be a foster home
and we will, you know, look at the environment. We also
will talk to the victim child or children, assess for any
kind of injuries that they may have, talk to them about the
incident and the allegation that was reported to find out
what happened and then from there we would want to talk to
other collateral whether they be children, adults or other
professionals to find out what information they have about
what's being investigated.
There are parts of the job that can be stressful or
intimidating depending on the type of investigation, the
foster parent can be intimidating, an operation can be
intimidating, and sometimes working with law enforcement or
professionals can be intimidating. They're the expert in what
they do and as an investigator, you're going out there to try
to make sense of something that can be very complicated and
you're trying to get access to some information that is not
readily available to a lot of people and that can be
intimidating to some people.
Any job that's worth doing is worth doing well and in that
responsibility there's the stress that goes with it. We have
a great responsibility for ensuring the safety of the
children that are in care and so, that in itself, brings a
level of stress. Then there's also the volume of work
that we do. We do care for, we do regulate a number of
operations and investigations that come in and so when
we get those we have to respond accordingly.
You could have your whole week scheduled for all you
know and P1s come in and there goes your week. Two years
ago there was a holiday sort of luncheon and we were all
getting ready for it and three P1s came in so three
investigators got their food, ate about ten minutes, and left.
That's just the way it works.
When you go home at night you're still in your mind. You're
thinking about what can I do the next time that I didn't do
this time. What can I do better? How can I recognize risks
when I see them? How can I sharpen my critical thinking
skills to make sure I make the best decisions for the
children that are in care.
I think it can affect your family. It can affect your
spouse. It can affect your home life absolutely. And you
know it's kind of a Catch-22 because sometimes the more
committed investigators are the ones who take it home with them.
When you see a child that's endured abuse, that's serious abuse,
it can be very difficult to handle as an investigator at times.
It's something that you have to learn to balance.
I've been involved in cases that broke my heart, yes.
They were the two child-death cases that happened very recently,
actually. One involved a two-year old foster child whoůshe wasů
according to doctors was shaken and then slammed.
This little girl was put into that home to be protected from
somebody who was not protective of her and so when somebody
kills a child, of course we wonder, you know,
and we question the whys.
I had a case that I could not forget and it involved a
12-year old girl that decided to attempt suicide by hanging
herself in a closet. I actually think about that child
all the time. Every now and then I will be laying in my
bed personally, and I'll look in my closet and think about it.
I will wake up at night having flashbacks about it and so
I'll always think about that child in that situation and
then like what could have been done differently to hopefully
prevent that.
A new worker receives a lot of support from a mentor and
supervisor. We are there with new workers to help them get
a good understanding, a good grounding, of what they need
to do in this position and even when they come out of training
we're still there supporting them for a good period of time
until they're really comfortable and shown they've grown in
their skills as an inspector.
We provide a lot of training to our investigators to help
prepare for this job. One of the first things they do is
go through basic skill development, which we call "BSD" and
that's four weeks of training with a week in between where
they do on-the-job training. They shadow and they are given
tasks in between training weeks to help process information
that they're learning. Investigators get an additional two
weeks of what
we call child care investigation training and that is
two-week training after they completed BSD.
At the beginning we definitely try to be more sensitive
to the type of cases they get. We're not going to give them
a child death case. We're not going to give them anything
that is very complicated. We try to go out with them their
first case, at least, so we can observe and be supportive
and answer any questions they might have. By that point
they have accompanied a number of investigators and
inspectors on field visits so they're very familiar with
he process but having to do it themselves they may still
need some support, of course, and so we do try and go out
with them to give them that support and answer any questions
that they might have.
This job is not an eight to five job. Children are in care
24 hours, seven days a week and so we need to be available
and able to go into the child care operation during those
hours to properly assess how well the operation is doing
in providing care.
I may have to work in the evening. I might have to work
some weekends, especially if it's on-call. They may have
to travel further distances then they planned to and come
back later than they planned to.
Very seldom do you sit behind a desk. Most of your time
is out there in the field face-to-face.
We cover many different counties depending on what are
you're in which could entail travel of just a few miles
down the road to 120 to 150 miles down the road.
You have to have good reliable transportation. You also
need to be able to finance the fuel to buy the gas for
Your car because you do travel almost every day you're
on the road. You are reimbursed at a later date, the
following month, but this is not the kind of job where
you can expect to catch the bus.
We are mobile workers in licensing and we document
as we go. I do this two ways. I personally prefer the
voice-recognition software which allows me to record
my notes with a digital recorder to be later transcribed
into a document or into the system and the second way is
we can be at a facility or foster home and use our mobile
tablet and take notes electronically.
As an investigator your have to document everything that
you do in your investigation, everything you observe, any
contacts you make, phone calls, face-to-face, and so the
documentation can be overwhelming at times.
And it's so important because it's what we rely on to
make our decision. It provides a snapshot into the life
of a child or into a child care operation. In order for
us to make good decisions, sound decisions based on the
information. We have to have good and complete accurate
documentation.
Some of the primary qualities that I feel a person needs
to have to be a successful inspector; number one, they have
to feel like they've been called to this position. This is
not a position that you use to acquire wealth. It's
definitely not a position that you would just use to
pass the time onto your next position.
To be a good investigator you need to have characteristics
such as being very organized. You have to be timely.
You also have to have skills to be able to be able to
prioritize what needs to be done,
you know, first, second, third.
Individuals who are a good fit for this job have a deep
level of commitment. They take initiative. They're flexible.
They recognize risk. They can assess information in order
to make some good decisions.
If you don't care about the job then it really doesn't
matter how many other skills that you have. So being
passionate is a given but the skill-set is being analytical,
being thorough, being able to ask questions when needed,
being articulate, and a good communicator, being able to
document well, things of that nature and being able to learn.
I think somebody who's not so appropriate maybe for the
position is somebody who's taking the job just to have a
job or somebody who wants it for the lifestyle.
I personally love my job as an investigator with licensing
but it's not for everyone so my advice is to expect to have
your highs and lows, have some cases that really are gonna
drag you to the bottom. You're going to feel overwhelmed.
You're going to feel overworked. You're going to feel like
you don't have the capacity sometimes to be able to do it
in the timeframe you have to. Just rely on your support
system and just be stable.
If you're considering working for licensing and your goal
is to be a licensing inspector, I would say the first thing
you need to do is look at yourself and ask yourself why are
you applying for this job? If you enjoy working with children,
you enjoy working with adults who are providing services
for the children and you have a deep desire to ensure that
the children are safe when they come into state care
then this job is probably for you.