The dangers Conni Dawson faces each day at work are for the most part potential ones.
Despite the confrontational nature of her job as a state social service worker investigating child abuse, Dawson said she rarely runs into hostility so severe that she fears for her safety. Anger from parents, yes. Even a few serious threats. But she's never been physically attacked.
Even so, the potential for danger is always there, as it was Thursday as she zigzagged across north St. Louis County following up on calls to the child abuse hot line.
It was there when she knocked on the door of an alleged crack addict to ask about the safety of her baby. And it was there throughout a heated visit with an unstable parent, whose simmering temper could boil at any time.
As a result, Dawson's fears are not of specific situations or neighborhoods, but of the unspecific threat of knowing that most every case could get ugly.
"I'd say you're more afraid because you never know what you'll get," Dawson said.
To some extent, Dawson's anxieties are unavoidable as she barges into what would otherwise be the private agonies and personal conflicts of families.
But three recent violent incidents in Missouri and Kansas - including the stabbing death of a mental health caseworker in a Kansas City suburb - have many rethinking whether protections for social service workers are adequate.
Consequently, the Missouri Department of Social Services is launching a project aimed at more closely tracking the safety of its 8,800 employees. The effort builds on gradual changes by the department that have influenced not only employee protocol but even the design of social service offices.
Steve Roling, the department's director, said the issue has not received the attention it deserved - primarily because few violent incidents against state workers have been reported. Similarly, there's no reliable data on the incident rates of violence against workers nationwide.
One national expert on the subject warns that risks facing social service workers are often ignored by supervisors and rarely disclosed by workers.
That assessment, by Christina Newhill of the University of Pittsburgh, comes from a survey of 1,200 social workers , most of whom said they had been involved in a violent situation at work at least once.
"We do know that this problem is going on, but there's a lot of denial," Newhill said.
Brad Bembry got his wake-up call on the risks of his job in May, when he was supervising the welfare benefits office in Dallas County in southwest Missouri.
Bembry said a man struggling with a drug addiction began to argue with an office worker about what he saw as delays in receiving his benefits. As his anger escalated, the man tackled Bembry. Eventually, Bembry wrestled the man out the office's door, but not before being bloodied up suffering a dislocated shoulder and jaw.
Bembry said the incident changed how everyone in the office views their own safety, and how they view clients who walk through the door.
"It was kind of an eye-opener of what to be alert for," he said.
Roling said he's also concerned about a separate case in rural Missouri where a child abuse investigator was assaulted on a doorstep. A police officer was present in that case, and no injuries were reported.
Those incidents pale next to the stabbing death last month of Teri Lea Zenner. Police say Zenner - a 26-year-old newlywed - was killed while visiting a mentally ill 17-year-old client in Overland Park, Kan.
David Wiebe, her former boss at the Johnson County Mental Health Center, said the young man had shown no warning signs of violence. Zenner visited the home alone.
"We're going to embark on a pretty serious examination of everything we do," Wiebe said.
But Wiebe said he's also putting the case in perspective, pointing out that workers in his office make tens of thousands of home visits a year without incident.
Mental health caseworkers in Missouri cite a similar track record. Officials at two private agencies that serve the St. Louis region say they can't recall a recent case of violence against a worker.
"As tragic as the Kansas City situation is, it's very rare," said Mark Stansberry, executive director of BJC Behavioral Health Services.
But Newhill said her survey of social workers suggests that threats and violence are relatively common. Among the findings:
58 percent of those surveyed reported one or more incidents of violence against them. More often that came in the form of threats, but a fourth of the respondents said they had been attacked physically.
Those working in criminal justice, child protection and drug and alcohol services encountered the most risk, followed by mental health workers and senior services workers.
Those findings are backed up by a report from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, suggesting that 70 percent of caseworkers have been victims of violence or threats of violence.
New roles for workers
Some attribute the danger to an increasingly violent society in general; others cite drugs, and methamphetamine in particular.
Illinois, for example, is in the process of reviewing its policy on sending child abuse investigators to homes with meth problems. Bill Peyton, who heads the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Southern Region office, said he expects more frequent police escorts of workers as a result.
Newhill and others say the increased dangers are related to the evolution of social services.
Child protection, for example, has seen a explosion in hot line calls, prompting far more contact between workers and the parents they investigate. Meanwhile, mental health workers are much more likely to visit a client at home than they were decades ago, when most patients were institutionalized.
"Social workers are seeing clients that they wouldn't have seen 30 years ago," Newhill said.
Even welfare reform plays a role, some say, with workers often placed in the position of telling clients that their benefits are expiring.
"They see us as an adversary," Bembry said.
Newhill said the increasing violence threatens not only workers but also efforts to provide good social services. Workers who are scared, she said, may not make the best decisions. And in time, those anxieties can contribute to high worker turnover.
Roling and other state officials say they are already taking precautions to deal with the situation.
Many welfare benefits offices are monitored by security guards. State offices are often designed to give workers a quick exit, while controlling access to parts of the building by the public.
Protocol by both the state and private agencies, meanwhile, allows caseworkers to request a police escort on visits or seek a different arrangement entirely.
"If you ever feel unsafe, the bottom line is that you don't go to the home," said Katrina Harper, director of Children and Family Services for Crider Center for Mental Health. The agency serves St. Charles County and other parts of suburban St. Louis.
Interviews by the Post-Dispatch with more than a dozen state and private caseworkers found that most are comfortable with the support they receive. Even so, some complained that their safety doesn't get enough attention.
"We spend too much time on fire and tornado warnings, not enough on these scenarios," said Bembry, speaking of the attack against him.
Others say workers are at risk due to a lack of basic technology. Missouri, for example, does not routinely assign cell phones to its workers as they respond to child abuse hot line calls.
Roling said that as the Department of Social Services studies the issue of safety, he's counting on workers to share their concerns so the state can act on them.
In the meantime, workers like Dawson are taking their own steps.
As she goes out alone investigating child abuse she's never without her cell phone. She foots the bill herself and has programmed the speed-dial numbers of each of the dozens of police departments in her area.
Because the potential for danger is always there.
Reporter Matthew Franck
E-mail: mfranck@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 573-635-6178
