“I didn’t choose social work; social work chose me,” says Deborah Keyser, Supervising Children’s Social Worker at Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (LA DCFS) in Palmdale.
“My whole life, it seems, I have been the person in my circle who people have turned to for support, guidance, advice, an ear…. It was something that came naturally to me,” she says. “Like many social workers, I had a deep desire to help others. I always had a strong moral compass, and from a young age I felt strongly about issues of social justice.”
Inspiring Deborah further was her best friend’s mother, a bilingual inner city school teacher whose caring attitude toward some of the least fortunate students served as a shining example. “She showed them love, hope, compassion, and stability. She was modeling for me the values of social work and planting seeds for my future.”
Interested in psychology as an undergrad at CSU, Northridge, Deborah recalls, “I had a fantastic professor who spent the first week of class reviewing the many career paths within the ‘helping professions.’ He mapped out each career path, the degree needed, the pay scale, and the burnout rate.
“Social work just made sense to me; it seemed like the next logical progression given my interests and desire to help others,” says Deborah. “It also appeared that it would give me the most flexibility in terms of potential client populations and employment options.”
Falling in Love with Public Child Welfare
Serendipitously, the university was launching its MSW program. Initially considering becoming a medical social worker, Deborah then learned of the Title IV-E Stipend Program. Intrigued, she applied and received the stipend, which meant “my husband [then-fiancé] did not have to take on a second job," she says.
“CalSWEC afforded me the opportunity to focus on my education, pay my tuition, and cover my living expenses," says Deborah. "I also fell in love with Public Child Welfare. My internship experiences were wonderful and really prepared me for my future career.”
Her first-year internship was as Rape Crisis Advocate and In-Home Outreach Counselor. As an advocate, she accompanied sexual abuse survivors to forensic exams/interviews and court hearings and answered crisis calls. “As fate would have it, the vast majority of the clients I accompanied were children, which helped me prepare to address and support children through some of the most difficult situations one could imagine,” says Deborah.
As a counselor, she provided counseling and support to families with open DCFS cases. “This experience helped me to better understand the organizational structure of DCFS as well as how to effectively team with Children’s Social Workers in order to ensure children and families could safely remain intact.”
Her second-year internship was with LA DCFS, largely in Family Reunification. “I was assigned as secondary worker to very challenging cases in which parents and caregivers were somewhat combative, the children had some extreme behaviors and needs, and I was tasked with stabilizing service linkage, visitation, and communication between parties. These experiences, which typically scare people off, made me fall in love with the work,” recalls Deborah. “I had great support from my field instructor and preceptors and felt a great deal of accomplishment in the work I had done.”
Providing Guidance, Training, and Support
Today, as Supervising Children’s Social Worker, Deborah faces a litany of responsibilities and challenges, but she’s up for them. “My desire to become a supervisor was born out of my own desire to see the practice of social work continue to improve. My hope has been that if I can provide guidance, training, and support and set clear expectations, I can have a small part in improving social work practice on a larger scale,” she says.
“It probably goes without saying that the biggest challenge social workers face is high caseloads/workloads." she notes. "Often the caseloads/workloads are disproportionately high in comparison to the complexity of the needs of families, which prevents social workers from being able to link families to services and has a ripple effect, which can delay outcomes. Additionally, limited resources and budget cuts for service providers means we are always looking to do more with less when attempting to meet client’s needs.”
Deborah describes the approach that has served her well: “You have to remain calm in very stressful situations and model a cool-under-pressure attitude to staff so that you do not pile on to already difficult situations. You must have strong conflict resolution skills in order to address issues in which clients and staff are not able to come to understandings on various issues. You also need to be willing to teach. Even seasoned workers need additional guidance and should be given the opportunity for professional growth and betterment.”
She has supervised as many as nine staff with caseloads as high as 40 children per worker. “Keeping calm, providing adequate supervision, and ensuring the needs of our most vulnerable population—children—are met can be daunting under these circumstances,” she says. ”But they also present opportunities for supervisors to really be leaders and create solutions to systemic barriers. Some of our most innovative initiatives and protocols have been born out of the most undesirable of circumstances and have come as a result of our leadership stepping up and problem solving as a team.”
She adds, “As a supervisor, it is also critical that you are a role model to staff and that you demonstrate that you would not ask of them something you are unable to do yourself. Some of my best or most rewarding work has been accomplished when I have modeled to my staff how to complete a task that seemed too difficult or overwhelming for them.”
Far-reaching Experience Continues to Grow
Deborah’s experience has been both varied and far-reaching. She has supervised the Foster Youth Education Program in which several of her assigned workers carried a caseload of foster youth attending local high schools. “We worked closely with the school sites and districts in order to advocate for the educational needs and rights of the foster youth and to assist these youth in achieving improved educational outcomes.”
As a training supervisor, she provided on-the-job training besides formal Core Academy training to her unit’s newly hired staff. She teamed with another training supervisor to develop a 20-week enhancement curriculum for all new staff that applied theoretical principles to actual casework and that provided opportunities to connect them with subject-matter experts in the office. Although Deborah is no longer a training supervisor, the training curriculum is still used.
“As a supervisor, mentor, coach, and adult learner, I attempt to take on and learn as much as I possibly can,” says Deborah. ”I take on additional responsibilities in order to diversify my knowledge and experiences. I truly believe that this is the key to longevity in such a stressful and sometimes difficult line of work.”
Among these “extras,” Deborah has participated in a work group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) and another on the Regional Community Alliance (RCA), which aims to connect DCFS with community partners/service providers to ultimately better serve their communities. Most recently, she has been involved in a pilot program to improve the educational outcomes of foster youth.
Core Practice Model Role
In the past year, Deborah has enthusiastically assumed another role—Core Practice Model (CPM) Coach Developer. “I no longer supervise a unit and their caseloads. Rather, I have been able to extend my reach further and provide training, coaching, and mentoring to the entire office as well as my peers on the elements of CPM, how to embed CPM in their daily work, and how to facilitate Child and Family Team Meetings, as well as provide skill building in order to continue to improve practice and maintain model fidelity,” she explains.
The role involves collaborating with community partners/service providers to educate them on this new practice model and team with the community to ensure that LA DCFS is providing the best services possible to families.
“This position [CPM Coach Developer] has been an amazing opportunity for me because I am able to be a driving force in a cultural shift in the practice of social work in L.A. County," says Deborah. "This approach honors families as the experts on their own lives and experiences, honors family voice and choice, and creates a team approach to addressing children and families’ underlying needs in order to tailor case plans and services specific to each family and their unique perspectives and experiences."
She explains, “This practice model is also trauma informed and anchored in a strengths/needs approach and encourages families to rely on teams/supports that will outlast formal interventions so that they have a support network to turn to in the event of future hardships. In so many ways, this model supports the fundamental values and principles of social work which were ingrained in me during my MSW education.”
Nurturing and Preparing Students
Additionally, Deborah is a field instructor at CSU, Northridge and CSU, Bakersfield, where, she says, “I think the most valuable thing I can do is to give students the real DCFS experience, to nurture them but also not shelter them from difficult cases and challenging situations. I think truly exposing them to the good, the bad, and the ugly prepares them to know what obstacles they will face once they join us full time.
“I also think it is incredibly valuable to create experiences that reinforce the theoretical learning points they are receiving in the classroom. I try to be mindful and infuse those theoretical concepts in discussions of cases during supervision in order for students to connect the dots between theory and practice,” Deborah says.
“It is also important to instill hope in students, to empower them to continue to be change agents, to not allow themselves to become complacent in this work, to know that doing great social work means that you are always attempting to work yourself out of a job.”
Deborah recently received the 2017–2018 Yes 2 Kids: Antelope Valley Child Abuse Prevention Counsel’s Social Worker of the Year Award for her outstanding contribution to child abuse prevention as well as for her commitment to her profession and community exhibited by her boundless energy and enthusiasm.
It recognizes her accomplishments over the past year as Supervisor and Coach Developer as well as her involvement in numerous other activities, including DCFS’s ERDD (Eliminating Racial Disproportionality and Disparity)/Cultural Brokers Work Group, raising money for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts, organizing an office blood drive following the Las Vegas shooting, assisting in an Easter basket drive for DCFS families, speaking about the Core Practice Model, and generally “getting involved in anything else that I could to assist our office, the community, and the children and families we serve,” Deborah says.
Reflecting on her career so far, she says, “I am so thankful to CalSWEC and CSUN for the opportunities provided to me. I would not be where I am today without both of these valuable programs.”
