Caitlin Whyte (Host): Welcome to In Their Words, a podcast from the UPMC Pinnacle Foundation and UPMC in Central PA. In this series, we lift up the voices of those working on the front lines of health, safety, and healing across our communities. In today's episode, we hear from Shannon Downey, Intake Services Director at Cumberland County Children and Youth Services.

She and her team are often the first to respond when a report of child abuse or neglect is made. Working in tandem with law enforcement and the UPMC Child Advocacy Center of Central PA, known as the CAC; Shannon's role, and the roles of those around her are crucial to ensuring children are safe, seen and supported during the worst moments of their lives.

It's a job that few can do and even fewer can sustain. Shannon talks about what keeps her going, even through emotionally heavy and complex cases. The hope and progress she sees in children over time, and the belief that every child deserves to feel safe in their home.

She also shares what this work actually looks like, a job that doesn't end at 5:00 PM. One that requires early mornings, late nights, holidays, and an unwavering commitment to showing up even when it's hard.

Shannon Downey: So my name is Shannon Downey and I am the Intake Services Director with Cumberland County Children and Youth Services. And I have been with the agency since 2015. I started as a caseworker, sort of boots on the ground working with families. And then, have worked my way up to an administrative role, which I took on in October, 2023.

So that's my progression in child welfare. And as the Director of the intake service area, I am responsible for a staff of five supervisors, 20 caseload carrying caseworkers, two emergency duty caseworkers, and three screeners. And my staff are the ones that are responsible for carrying out child abuse investigations and general concerns assessments.

So we are the kind of stereotypical knock at the door, that you would see in pop culture. We received a report and look into it. So there are other service areas in the agency, other caseworkers and staff that work with families on a more ongoing basis. But my staff are responsible for getting in, kind of figuring out what's going on and then making recommendations after that. So, we work pretty closely with the CAC in Harrisburg, as part of child abuse investigations. We also partner closely with law enforcement. And so I just sort of help the supervisors in the service area, manage cases, often complex, difficult cases, and, help them with managing their personnel and staff as well.

My undergraduate education is in social work. And so, I am like many of my peers drawn to the helping profession. I think, that social workers are charged with working with the most vulnerable. And I think children are a really incredible population to work with because of, how much opportunity there is for seeing success over time with children.

Not that there isn't that opportunity with other populations, but we work with families on the worst days of their lives. And, even though we see a lot of pain and experience a lot of secondary trauma, we see success and we see growth and we see evolution with families. And that's really, I think, the thing that keeps us all coming back every day.

We're county employees, we're public servants. And so we are strict adherence to things like the Fair Labor Standards Act and things like that.

But, caseworkers who, our caseworkers are our hourly employees, but they even if they're not actively working cases after hours, they're of course thinking about their families, and thinking about their cases and that sort of thing. But we are responsible for meeting families where they are.

And of course, families have variable schedules and so our caseworkers are often working very early in the morning, late in the evenings, weekends, holidays, and then the supervisors as well. They serve on call shifts and they often take calls, regarding their cases after hours, and on weekends.

Because most of the decision making in our agency is a team effort. And so whenever we need to call on folks on the team who aren't working, they respond and they answer because, everybody's committed to the mission and committed to making sure kids are safe and have good quality of life.

So, that doesn't stop at 5:00 PM. It goes on every day, all day. And so while we encourage, of course, a good work-life balance and we want people to have a good quality of life; it is kind of special in that way for them.

Host: When a report comes in, Shannon's team is first on the scene. Their job is to assess the child's immediate safety, coordinate with law enforcement, and take the first critical steps to determine what's happening.

Then when ready, the child is brought to the UPMC in Central PA CAC in Harrisburg; a trusted and trauma-informed space where they are interviewed with care and professionalism by trained forensic specialists. It's a system designed to protect, support, and minimize additional harm.

Shannon Downey: So I would say the most typical trajectory of a family who works with us, as it relates to cases that would come within the purview of our multidisciplinary team specifically, the CAC, we would receive a report from Childline.

It would allege some sort of abuse that would require a relatively immediate response from a caseworker. Our first phone call is almost always to our partners in law enforcement. When we are investigating child abuse, they are crimes against children. And so they fall under the criminal code and also the Child Protective Services Law, which is the statute that governs a lot of our work.

And so, we have to work hand in hand with law enforcement. The investigations are concurrent. They are separate, but they are concurrent. And so we would make contact with law enforcement. And then our first order of business always, always is to ensure the safety of the child, that we received the report.

So we can, do that in a variety of ways. We see the child face to face, wherever the child may be, and that's often at school during the school year, summer camps, at home. Of course, sometimes it has to be in the community. I mean, we get creative. But that's what we're doing. So we're making sure that the child is safe and every other child in the home, of that child, or that may have access to the person who's alleged to have committed the crime against the child.

And then once we're assured that the child's in a safe situation, then we start to really collaborate with the rest of our partners in the multidisciplinary team. And so that means, we get an appointment at the Children's Advocacy Center and we make contact there with the forensic interviewers and the advocates from the YWCA and, that's when the child is interviewed and we can get a better picture of what's really going on, in that home with that child.

I think, within the ecosystem of helping and human services, I would say that there's a pretty solid understanding of our role. But I would say that even that is rife with misconception. For example about how easy it is for us to take custody of a child or, what we can and cannot, what kind of information we can and cannot release.

And that sort of thing. I would say as it relates to knowledge and understanding about our roles and responsibilities with the general public; I would say that pop culture characterizations of child welfare agencies are the primary basis of knowledge for most folks. And it was the same for me before I started working in the field.

So it's understandable. So I would say that any opportunity that we have to raise awareness about what it is that we do and how we can be of service to the community is an opportunity that we take. I would say that there is a lot of room for improvement, in terms of, how we could better engage with the community.

It's something that in the field we often think about and talk about and, try to work, workshop as much as we can. But it is difficult. We are siloed even among the helping professionals I think, a bit because though we are social workers, we are investigative, to a certain extent and that can be alienating to people that we're trying to help, understandably.

So I think if somebody were interested in pursuing a career in child welfare, certainly I think the accredited social work programs, at universities and colleges is the best way to go. The Council on Social Work Education is the accrediting body for social work programs at higher learning institutions.

I'm a Shippensburg University alum, and I have, lots of really positive things to say about that program. So I think first you, would want to get your, get your bachelor's degree in a helping profession, I would recommend social work. Many, many of us have undergraduate degrees in social work and lots of us have graduate degrees in social work as well.

Although we do have a diverse pool of people with experience and educational backgrounds, we have folks who are criminal justice majors, psychology majors and that sort of thing. But that really, I think, gears you up for working in the field. I think it's important to have skills related to dealing with power in relationships and the helping profession, skills with managing diversity and engaging in anti-racist, and inclusive practices. And the social work field does a really good job of educating students about how to do that in the real world. And then that's really the minimum requirement for our field in Pennsylvania anyway, is a bachelor's degree in one of those disciplines.

I would say that child welfare though is special because there is, there is such high turnover and it's such a difficult field to recruit and retain staff that there are federal incentives called Cweb and Cwell are the acronyms for it. And so, it's financial incentive for students in the school who commit to working in the child welfare field and they are given, tuition reimbursement, if they do that. So, that's always helpful as well because you do an internship then in child welfare and you can really decide then if it's for you. And so that's, I would say the typical journey of somebody that makes their way into a child welfare agency.

Host: While Shannon's team investigates these cases, they rely on the CAC team for long-term coordination. Whether it's helping understand a child's behavior, navigating investigative choices, or ensuring mental health support is in place, the CAC team is essential. Shannon speaks with deep admiration for the empathy, expertise and leadership the CAC staff bring and highlights just how critical these collaborative relationships are to building the best outcomes for children.

Shannon Downey: We are so fortunate to have the caliber of staff and in even the facility itself, that we have at the CAC in Harrisburg, I will say, they are revered by my staff as experts. We consult with them from the very beginning of a case. Most frequently, they, think their training, of course, is, I would say probably maybe more intense than our training. Our staff are, certified after 120 hours of training and then require 20 hours yearly to maintain that certification.

But the staff at the CAC and I would imagine for any accredited child advocacy center across the state; their training is so acutely relevant. I don't know how else to say it other than that, but if we have a question for them about why a child may be demonstrating a certain behavior or how appropriate it is for us to take a certain investigative step, as it relates to the child; they really are with us every step of the way, as consultants, as advocates, as experts. And so I, don't really know how much more glowing I can be about working with the folks there. But, I've known Shannon Casaboom for 10 years, and she's an incredible, incredible advocate for children and is a powerful bridge among disciplines who often have very different approaches and sometimes different goals. But she has helped us create a really strong team in Cumberland County. So yeah, I hope that answers your question.

The forensic interview is only the beginning of the story often for folks that we work with, that we refer to the child advocacy center. So they have mental health coordinators, that work again as partners with us to make sure that subsequent to the forensic interview, children and families have the services they need, to mitigate the damage that the abuse has done to their development and their functioning and that sort of thing.

Our agency is working with Dr. Drew Krantz to educate our supervisors and provide some technical assistance to them, at no cost to us. Because our staff experience such high rates of burnout and vicarious trauma, that our supervisors are asking us for help with figuring out how to navigate that.

So he's doing a special training for our staff. They get to participate in trainings that the CAC makes sure that we're aware of for their professional development. And so even if a community liaison or partner knows about the forensic interviewing facet of a child advocacy center, it's such a small fraction of everything that center can do for the children and families of Cumberland County and the staff at my organization.

And I can't conceive of hearing from Shannon or any of the staff there, that, well, we have to get rid of that service because we've lost funding. It would just be absolutely detrimental, at least in some way to how we operate, I guess is the simplest way I can say it.

So I think some of the most powerful moments I've seen over the last 10 years that I've been in the field; it has to do with victims, or survivors rather, coming back around as adults and then professionals who enter the field, based upon the experience that they've had with the professionals who helped them through the darkest, some of the darkest times in their lives. And so that, that doesn't of course happen every day, but when it does, it is a powerful reminder that every interaction we have with children and families, has a ripple effect and we can't know what the end of the story is for all of them, but, we are all in it together. Our partners at the CAC and law enforcement and mental health professionals and our domestic violence and sexual assault advocates, and I mean everybody, we have these experiences together.

And then we hope, and we try as hard as we can to make every single story one that's somehow successful at the end of it.

Host: For Shannon and her team, the most powerful moments are when a former child client returns as a professional. Someone inspired to help others because of the care they once received. These are the rare full circle stories that remind us that one act of compassion can echo for generations.

Behind every successful intervention is a web of support. Caseworkers, clinicians, advocates, donors, and community members who make it possible for kids to heal and thrive. Thank you for listening to In Their Words, a podcast from the UPMC Pinnacle Foundation and UPMC in Central PA. If this story moved you, please take a moment to rate and review this podcast.

It helps others find these incredibly personal and important stories. Stories about some of the most difficult yet life-changing moments in people's lives.