Schools

Talking with the Attorney General for a Darien Family

Dealing with children and families in crisis situations is part of what some Darien school officials have had to do in order to protect the children—often with a lack of support from state social service agencies.

Robin Lawler Pavia, Darien director of special education, was helping out a child and family in a crisis situation in which she believed someone in the family might die unless help came from the state Department of Social Services.

But officials at that agency adamantly refused to get involved.

So Pavia called the state Attorney General's Office. Attorney General George Jepsen got on the phone with her, she said. Later that evening, his intervention appeared to have made a difference.

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Pavia related that anecdote Wednesday night at one of the Board of Education's series of meetings on the 2012-2013 fiscal year schools budget. She told the story to illustrate just how important it is to have a full-time social worker in the elementary schools to help with crises and other needs students and their families have.

She also wants an additional school psychologist for the high school and middle school to free up time for other school psychologists to deal with situations where children in those schools are in crises.

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Those needs can't be met well by administrators who have other duties and who aren't trained as social workers, she said.

"You need a system-savvy person to get the help a child needs," Pavia said. "Not too many people know how to get through the gatekeepers. Social workers know how to do that."

When Pavia was trying to get help for that family in which she believed a life was in danger, she spoke to more than one person at the Department of Social Services. She was told that DDS help "wasn't going to happen," she said.

"I said, 'You don't understand, it is going to happen, and I will do whatever it takes to make sure it's going to happen.' That's when I got on the phone with the Attorney General's Office."

Later that evening, a DDS official told her that the agency would help the family, and the official told her, she said, "by the way, it had nothing to do with your call to the attorney general—we were going to do this anyway."

On another occasion, Pavia said, she made a legally required call to the state to report a case in which a student appeared to be in danger of hurting himself or others. She called at 3 p.m. and was put on hold until 5 p.m. without getting any response.

She went home and dialed again. She was on the phone, waiting, for another three hours. And never got a response.

Pavia said that when education officials say the lack of another social worker on the town's Education Department payroll will allow other employees to do their jobs without excessive interruptions, this is what they mean.

"If I get a call, and I have to help a family, the children and the families who are depending on me are not getting my service," Pavia said. It can take weeks for her to reschedule meetings with the parents of students, she said.

"The number of students and families in crisis has grown radically in the past two years," Pavia told the board.

The new social worker is in Superindentent Stephen Falcone's proposed education budget, at a cost of $70,000 for salary and benefits.

An additional school psychologist (also in the budget, at an additional cost of $95,891) who would help with evaluating students in the high school and middle school. The new psychologist would free up other school psychologists to help with crisis situations without delaying evaluations, she said.

"I'm begging you," Pavia told the board. "This is our absolute greatest need."


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