Saturday, September 25, 2010

Quotable

Chuck Baynton, member of the MJS Reader Advisory Committee:
The expression “wasteful private spending” is one you never hear, even as by millions we regularly pay a buck for a drink of bottled water. “Wasteful government spending” is the old hobby horse to ride to electoral victory again this year. So it’s a good time to have Crocker Stephenson’s look at Milwaukee’s struggling child welfare system. Caseworkers have such a tough job, he says, that it’s a revolving door. We pay investment bankers a hundred times more. Is their work a hundred times tougher? No. Money is about priorities. The depth of our commitment to all children is plain to see.

4 comments:

  1. Caseworkers do have a tough job, but there are many more social workers than successful investment bankers.
    Not all investment bankers make big money- they have to be good at it.
    And if the child care social workers acted like professionals instead of union members, then they may be able to make more money.

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  2. It just flat-out is NOT about money. It is about CHOOSING to SERVE a population. If you cannot prevent abuse and death of your charges...you need to go. Period. I am an MSW and this long, long, LONG saga makes me ill.

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  3. Dan, the child welfare workers are, for the most part, private agency employees. The state privatized it in 2001. And they are not unionized, otherwise their work conditions would not be so untenable that they don't stay.

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