This paper presents a case-based analysis of a Child Protective Services (CPS) intervention involving a Latino mother at risk of losing custody of her four-year-old daughter. The paper describes the client's background, the circumstances that triggered CPS involvement — including domestic violence, substance abuse, and a criminal incident — and the practitioner's efforts to engage, assess, and advocate on the client's behalf. It examines three core practice skills used during the intervention (evaluation, engagement, and assessment), critiques the outcome, and reflects on whether the intervention was empowering and free from discrimination. References to social work scholarship on ethical decision-making and Latino substance abuse contextualize the analysis.
This paper offers a summary and analysis of a Child Protective Services (CPS) intervention involving an at-risk child. The intervention is described from beginning to end, including how problems were identified and addressed. The analysis covers how negotiation and advocacy were conducted on behalf of the client, identifies at least three practice skills — micro and/or macro — employed during the intervention, and offers a general critique of the intervention's progress. That critique addresses what could have been done differently, whether the intervention was empowering, and whether it carried any discriminatory or oppressive dimensions.
The client in this case is a woman referred to here as the client. She identifies as Mexican-American and holds Catholic beliefs. Her parents remain practicing Catholics to this day, though the client herself does not attend church. She is twenty-eight years old and heterosexual, and was born to two married parents as an only child. She has a four-year-old daughter named Maria and is currently at serious risk of losing her parental visitation rights due to several compounding factors.
Chief among these factors is a history of violent physical altercations with the father of her child. Both the client and the child's father are reportedly using illicit drugs and alcohol. The client acknowledges the father's substance use as problematic but characterizes her own alcohol consumption as merely occasional and her illicit drug use as something she could stop at will — and therefore not a problem. Her recent personal history, however, directly contradicts that position.
A particularly telling incident involved the client being arrested after slapping her mother and removing her child from bed in the middle of the night. Notably, she has no recollection of this event occurring. The combination of ongoing substance use, a pattern of violence, and a developing criminal record will make it extremely difficult for her to obtain and maintain gainful employment going forward. Despite these serious obstacles, the client appeared to embrace the CPS intervention and expressed enthusiasm about completing the process, stating she is willing to do "anything" to get her daughter back.
However, her apparent denial regarding her substance abuse represents a significant barrier to that goal. She is required to complete multiple objectives to regain custody of Maria — including anger management counseling and random drug testing — and must satisfy all of them. Given her denial and the weight of the requirements, her chances of reunification are at present quite slim.
In terms of preventing or resolving the problems identified, the practitioner made it unambiguously clear that no level of illicit drug use would be acceptable, both because random drug testing would detect it and because the substance use is directly fueling the violence and neglect that led to the client's arrest. Drug use is not a peripheral concern — it is central to the entire pattern of behavior that brought Maria into CPS involvement.
With respect to negotiating and advocating on the client's behalf, the practitioner emphasized that this intervention was not about judgment or punishment. Rather, it is about protecting Maria and determining what is genuinely best for her. The client's continued path of substance use and contact with an abusive partner is directly contrary to her stated goal of regaining custody. The client needs to break the cycle she is in, which requires abstaining from drugs and limiting contact with the child's father to only what is court-mandated.
Three practice skills employed during this engagement were evaluation, engagement, and assessment. The client's situation was evaluated and assessed thoroughly, and the practitioner engaged with her as a client rather than merely as a subject of investigation.
One critique worth raising is whether the intervention truly resonated with the client, or whether she may ultimately reject the guidance as judgmental. Calling something what it is in social work — abuse, neglect, and so on — and actually getting a client to take the necessary steps are often two very different challenges. If something could have been handled differently, it would have been a calmer, more measured assertion that regardless of how she may feel at any given moment, the substance use, violence, and alcohol consumption must all be addressed in order to protect and reconnect with her daughter.
The intervention was empowering in at least one respect: there appeared to be a subtle indication that the client was beginning to understand the gravity of her situation, even if she did not explicitly acknowledge it. Whether that understanding will translate into sustained behavioral change remains to be seen.
"Practice skills used, critique, and empowerment evaluation"
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Vasquez, M. T. (2009). Latino/a culture and substance abuse. Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, 8(3), 301–313. doi:10.1080/15332640903110484
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