Interning as Guardians
During a social work internship last year, Mike King had to decide between what he considered two poor choices in a child custody case. He could recommend to a Maine District Court judge that a child continue living with one parent or change the primary residence to the home of the other. Both situations were problematic.
After meeting with family members, mental health workers, teachers and others, King chose what he considered the lesser of evils. As a volunteer Guardian ad litem, he recommended the other parent be assigned custody.
King, a master’s social work student from Brewer, Maine, is one of five University of Maine graduate students who participated in the newest, perhaps most challenging internships the School of Social Work has developed to apply classroom lessons to real-life experiences.
Of more than 100 human services, mental health or community agencies that serve as field education sites for UMaine social work students, a district court Guardian ad litem internship, serving as an advocate for low-income children in contested divorce and child custody cases, can be an intense, often emotional introduction to the harsh world of disrupted families, abused or neglected children and sometimes domestic violence.
Each semester, up to three School of Social Work graduate students who opt for the one- or two-semester internships go to Augusta, Maine, for 30 hours of special training in mediation, court procedure, family dynamics, interview techniques and report writing to become Guardians ad litem. They can spend up to 16 hours a week on cases, interviewing children and the people who know the youngsters to gain perspective on what living arrangements will best serve them in the future.
The UMaine students become active participants in court proceedings, looking out for the children of embattled parents, calling witnesses and making recommendations about a child’s future.
UMaine Guardians ad litem have been working in district courts in Penobscot, Piscataquis and Hancock counties, with expansion expected to Kennebec and Waldo counties.
“They’re actually the arm of the court and the voice of the child,” says Nancy Kelly, field coordinator for UMaine’s School of Social Work. The work, she says, “is all about the best interests of the child. They look at the situation from multiple perspectives and make a recommendation to the court.”
According to Kirsten Skorpen, the District Court System’s Family Division resource coordinator who oversees the training in Augusta, there is no other program like it in the courts’ overtaxed Family Division in Maine.
“One of the wonderful things about this collaboration is that it’s provided the courts a chance to collaborate in a meaningful way with the School of Social Work,” Skorpen says. “What I like about (this program) is it really broadens a multidisciplinary perspective. It really brings it into the courtroom and into families’ lives, and enriches the outcome and informs the court in a very positive way.
“It’s a pretty innovative project.”
Skorpen estimates that roughly 5,000 divorce and parental rights cases with children involved are brought before the court annually. While many of the parents are able to come to agreements over their children’s best interests, some cases require the assistance of a third party, a Guardian ad litem.
To protect the interests of children in those cases, the court system has a roster of about 350 Guardians ad litem, mostly lawyers or mental health workers who charge $80 to more than $200 per hour for their work. Some Guardians ad litem assist low-income families on a volunteer basis, but many child custody decisions are made with little or no background research.
The availability of student Guardians ad litem from UMaine helps the state with an overwhelming caseload of contested, often angry, divorces, in which hundreds of low-income children caught in the middle otherwise would have no one doing background research and making recommendations on their behalf.
“It’s an amazing experience for the students,” says adjunct social work faculty member Deborah Mattson, a UMaine alumna and certified mediator and Guardian ad litem who supervises and meets with the students on a weekly basis.
“They’re learning so much. They’re learning family systems theory. They’re learning about child development. They’re learning about the dynamics of conflict, community resources, and they’re learning about working collaboratively with other professionals, and about the court system,” she says.
The novel internship program was born from a chance meeting and casual conversation two years ago between School of Social Work Director Robin Russel, a former children’s attorney, and Maine District Court Chief Judge Ann Murray.
When Judge Murray expressed concern at the lack of advocates for low-income children in divorce cases, Russel saw an opportunity to expand the social work internships into a field seldom visited by college students.
MSW student Kassie Merrill from Peru, Maine, was one of the first to sign up for the internship, and later helped Russel obtain a grant from the Maine Community Foundation to help pay students’ travel expenses and Mattson’s stipend. Merrill says the comprehensive training and experiences she had, including grant writing, enabled her to land a job even before she graduated.
“It’s been invaluable in marketing myself. I got a job almost immediately,” says Merrill, who graduated in August and plans to continue as a registered pro bono Guardian ad litem, even with her full-time job at Acadia Hospital in Bangor, Maine.
Mike King, who plans to become a clinical social worker in public schools, says understanding the “whole psychosocial picture of an individual and family unit” was a particularly valuable experience.
“I’ll definitely take that with me, and when I work with children in the future,” he says, “I’ll remember there are many more dynamics involved with children.”
