Social Worker Safety After the Murder of Deidre Silas

 Deidre Silas was a social worker working at The Illinois Department of Children and Family services in Springfield Illinois. On Jan, 4, 2022, Silas was stabbed to death while making a home visit by someone staying in the house. Safety has always been a concern regarding Social Work and the murder of Silas has encouraged people to advocate for policies to protect social workers. 

Despite state officials’ pointing out changes they plan to make to protect workers, little difference has been made a year after Silas’s death. Those in the field state that one of the main issues that causes social workers to go to visits alone, is there are too many cases and not enough workers. A study done in 2020 showed that more than 73% of public child welfare workers had been verbally abused, 36% have been threatened, and about 50% have experienced symptoms of PTSD (Gerstein). Illinois has a policy that states that a social worker may delay a visit until they can have another person with them if the situation could be dangerous. Although this is ideal, it is not realistic for the oversized workload most social workers have to deal with. 

Policies suggested include providing bullet-proof shirts to social workers, cell phone signal boosters, and panic buttons for investigators to contact law enforcement. Another controversial policy signed into law by Governor Pritzker, requires departments to provide their employees with pepper spray. Unfortunately it is widely reported that these changes are not happening soon enough. A lobbyist for the Illinois chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, Kyle Hillman states, “DCFS was not interested in things that were going to cost them more money; they’re interested in things that would make good media reports…We’re going to see more tragedies.” (Gerstein).

Works Cited:

Gerstein, M. (2023, February 22). Murdered on the job: A year after a child welfare investigator was killed, little has changed. Youth Today. https://youthtoday.org/2023/02/murdered-on-the-job-a-year-after-a-child-welfare-investigator-was-killed-little-has-changed/

While it has not been a statewide change, the Sangamon County DCFS Field Office where Deidre worked has had two deputies from the Sheriff's department assigned to work with social workers since shortly after her murder. They often go out on child removals, and they help research people in households since the law enforcement database they use is much quicker than the national child abuser databases social workers use. This change has been welcomed by the social workers at the office. When I visited the office about ten months after her murder, her cubical was pretty much untouched as she had left it, and posters asking for justice for Deidre were abundantly posted around the office.

The man who killed Deidre was allegedly suffering from a psychotic disorder, and possibly not understanding the situation when he stabbed her. My sources in the county jail described the man as being “crazy” ever since he became a guest of the county. Mental illness and substance abuse are frequently present as parental situations in the appendices of the annual report on child deaths from our state’s inspector general. That is, social workers covering the most difficult cases where children’s lives may really be at risk are often encountering adults who may be intoxicated of suffering from psychosis during a home visit. In the case of the DCFS worker Pamela Knight, who was also murdered in the line of work a few years before Deidre, the father who beat her up was just an angry and violent person. He took a plea deal and will serve 21 years incarcerated.

Social work is a dangerous job, but not as dangerous as commercial fishing, forestry, law enforcement, truck driving, construction, and a few other occupations like that. The Department of Labor has estimates of the number of injuries and deaths per hours worked in various occupations. Social work is more dangerous than most jobs, but not among the very worst (most dangerous) careers.

Protecting Social Workers and Health Professionals from Workplace Violence Act of 2019

This year Congress may consider approving the Protecting Social Workers and Health Professionals from Workplace Violence Act of 2019; this is a policy that would help provide safety measures to social workers, health care workers, and human services professionals. This bill would especially protect those who provide services for high risk and dangerous situations and for other reasons. Representative  Brownley of California introduced the bill to the House of Representatives on November 18, 2019. It was then referred to the Committee on Education and Labor, and to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The purpose of this bill is to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to States to provide safety measures to social workers, health workers, and human service professionals in dangerous and high risk situations. 

The bill will award grants to States, Indian Tribes, Tribal organizations, and urban Indian organizations to provide safety measures protecting these professionals. Grants that may be awarded to these States or organizations will provide support for certain safety precautions. Such safety measures include: installation of safety equipment, technical assistance and training for safety communications, training sessions and exercises for self defense, facility safety improvements, training in cultural competency, training to work with certain clients, resources and materials to educate staff on safety and awareness, support services, installation of a local data incident tracking systems to monitor threats and violence, and other prevention measures laid out by the Secretary. The installation of safety equipment includes communications or recording systems such as cell phones, tracking devices, or panic buttons used for foster care or other client visits to ensure safety. Facility safety improvements include barrier protection and security cameras. Training in cultural competency could include linguistic training, and training for minimizing conflict situations. Training social workers and other health professionals for work with certain clients include: clients with serious mental and substance use disorders, behavioral problems, and those who need help coping. The support services that would be implemented would be counseling and additional resources for those workers who have experienced safety issues or trauma in the workplace. 

In order for a State or organization to receive such a grant, they must submit an application to the Secretary accompanied by any information that the Secretary requires. Each application should describe the agencies that will receive funding and type of work done by the agencies, describe the specific activities for which the grant will be used, and include a budget, and assurance that the State or organization will continually evaluate the effectiveness of the safety measures provided by the grant. 

The cost of this bill is authorized to be appropriated $10 million for each year from 2021 through to 2025. That is the total amount of funding, so if each year 10 states received grants through this act, the grants would average $1 million per state per year, and over the course of five years, each state could hypothetically get a grant. But of course, the training needs in states like California, Texas, New York, and Florida would be much higher than in Wyoming, New Hampshire, Delaware, and North Dakota, so some states might get a few hundred thousand and others might get two or three million. The grant comes from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and requires follow up with those applicants who received the grant to continue receiving the money for their safety measures. Currently this bill has been passed by the House of Representatives and is currently waiting to be passed by the Senate. 

There are many healthcare professionals that would benefit from this bill. Many nurses face the fear of going to work each day, not knowing what kind of patients they will have that day. A majority of these nurses are those who work with older patients and those patients who have mental or behavior disorders. Some patients become violent with their nurses, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes through no fault of their own (for example, in some types of dementia). This bill would help make nurses feel more safe going to work each day. Whether it is because they now know self defense, or they have other trainings on how to handle dangerous situations. This bill would also help social workers who work in the field, out of the office. There have been many cases where social workers have gone out into the field, especially foster care visits or DCFS investigations, and have been injured, harmed, or assaulted on the job. For example, in September of 2017 Andrew Sucher felt the DCFS was harassing him, so he knocked down social worker Pamela Knight and kicked her, mortally injuring her, so that she died a little over four months later. With this bill these social workers would be provided with self defense training, as well as provided with GPS/bluetooth tracking so that supervisors and law enforcement know where the worker is placed. Overall, this bill will provide not only peace of mind to these workers, but it will also provide them with concrete measures to remain safe in the workplace.