ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on workers’ stories about their own understanding of child welfare work to describe their understanding of the people they work with, the clients. Stories of triumph over the odds by individual clients sustained and guided the child welfare workers. The chapter highlights the negative effects of foster care: the effect on the child of placement itself, the instability of placements for many children, and the frequent transferring of cases between workers. Stories of individual triumph serve to reinforce and make real the child-saving and protective purposes of child welfare work used to frame workers’ achievements. The stories countered the popular understandings of what child welfare workers do. There are increasing numbers of children entering the child welfare system. As many as 500,000 children, nationally, were predicted to be in care by 1995. Younger and more troubled children are placing enormous strains on the child welfare system.
