What is it really like to be a foster care case worker?

In this powerful and emotional conversation, we sit down with former Indiana DCS case worker, foster/adoptive mom, and child advocate Moriah Coons to talk about the side of foster care most people never see.

From overwhelming caseloads and dangerous home visits to heartbreaking court decisions and emotional burnout, Moriah gives an honest look at the impossible weight many case workers carry every single day. She shares stories from the front lines of child welfare that reveal just how complicated the foster care system really is and why so many good case workers end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and misunderstood.

But this conversation is not about defending a broken system. It is about humanizing the people inside it.

Moriah also shares incredible moments of hope and redemption, including adoption stories, reunifications, and the moments that reminded her why the work mattered in the first place.

Whether you are a foster parent, adoptive parent, CASA worker, social worker, church leader, or someone simply trying to better understand foster care, this episode will challenge the way you think about the system and the people trying to hold it together.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What foster care case workers actually face behind the scenes
• Why communication can feel so difficult in foster care cases
• The emotional toll of carrying impossible decisions
• How judges, policies, and courts impact child safety decisions
• Why many foster care workers burn out
• Threats, trauma, and overwhelming caseloads
• The heartbreaking realities of neglect and domestic violence cases
• How churches and foster families can support case workers
• Stories of adoption, healing, and redemption

Some moments from this episode that will stick with us:

• “Every single time I walked up the stairs, I was terrified the baby would be dead.”
• “They’re not thriving. They’re surviving.”
• “For every one bad egg, there’s a million more trying to do the right thing.”
• “They’re just normal people trying to make a difference.”

Moriah Coons was born and raised in Texas and studied Bible, Theology, Children’s Ministry, and Special Needs Ministry at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. She served as a Family Case Manager with Indiana DCS before transitioning into victim advocacy and domestic violence support work. Today, she serves as the Foster And Adoption Family Support Lead at Trader’s Point Christian Church (https://tpcc.org/fam). Moriah and her husband Austin were licensed foster parents for nearly four years and recently adopted a sibling group of three. She also serves on the Executive Board for Champions For Children, an organization focused on making Indiana children safer.

If this episode encouraged or challenged you, would you take a moment to follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone else? Those small actions truly help us continue growing this community and spreading awareness around foster care, adoption, and living faithfully right where God has placed us.

Support The Podcast

https://dream-small-podcast.captivate.fm/support

Speaking Requests

If your church, conference, or organization would like Jason and Whitney to speak about foster care, adoption, faith, leadership, or living a meaningful life through small acts of faithfulness, you can contact them at: dreamsmallpodcast@gmail.com

Join our weekly devotional newsletter here:

https://captivate.us4.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=c75f5dfcf9d690c6c9f256d22&id=d17b98130b

Follow & Contact

Email: dreamsmallpodcast@gmail.com

Instagram: @dreamsmallpodcast

Facebook: Dream Small Podcast

Twitter/X: @DreamSmallShow

Music Credit

"Paradise Found" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons.

On top of juggling all my other cases, I would go to this mom's apartment just to make sure the baby was alive.

And every single time I would walk up the stairs to that door, I would just be terrified that this was the time the baby was going to be dead.

Welcome to Dream Small, where we believe God does big things through the small and everyday faithfulness of his people.

I'm Jason.

And I'm Whitney.

We're a family of eight who's fostered, adopted, and stumbled our way through learning that small, everyday choices can change lives.

In a world that tells you to chase big, we dare you to dream small.

Because you know what?

It's not about chasing fame.

It's about choosing faithfulness.

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Dream Small podcast.

We have a guest with us today, and I'm super excited for her to share her story and her experience as we continue with Foster Care Awareness Month.

And she has a bunch of experience professionally, personally, and then again also professionally, like times 10.

So I'm super excited for you to get to hear directly from her just to continue as to raise awareness and as we continue through the month of May.

So, Jason, if you want to read.

Her intro, go for it.

All right, so we have Mariah with us today.

Born and raised in Texas, Mariah.

What part of Texas?

The Dallas area.

Okay.

I think everybody's from the Dallas area because that's a really big spot.

It's a really big area, too.

She attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago to study Bible theology, children's ministry, and special needs ministry.

She worked as a family case manager and permanency and foster care during her her time there.

Before transitioning to her local victims advocate office, she was the victim advocate assigned to a majority of the child crime victims in their county.

She is currently the foster and adoption family support lead at Traders Point Christian Church.

Mariah and her husband, Austin, were licensed foster parents for almost four years, and they've recently adopted a sibling group of three.

Mariah also serves on the executive board of Champions for Children, a grassroots organization focused on making Indiana children safer.

In her very limited free time, she loves reading, camping, backpacking, hiking, CrossFit, crafting, and spending time with her dogs.

Is that it?

Is that all?

That's it.

Okay.

Are you sure?

No, you're right.

Yeah.

Well, Mariah thank you for coming on the podcast with us.

I'm so excited to be here.

I'm not going to lie.

I know we just met a couple.

You're one of my new favorite people.

Just getting to spend time with you at that conference and it's fun to connect with people.

You're like, oh, she's one of us.

So that's always fun.

Yeah, we fan girl, you.

Thanks.

You're one of our heroes.

I love it.

You guys are one of mine, so.

So on our podcast, we start with something we're grateful for every day because, you know, in our world, we can get in a mire of negativity.

So what are you grateful for today?

I am grateful we have the keys to our new house.

I.

This has been a couple month long process, but right now I'm living about an hour and a half away from my.

My church and my job.

So I'm so excited to move closer to be about 13 minutes away instead of an hour and a half away.

I've been driving about 12 to 20 hours a week for almost a year now, and that's just taking a lot of time away from my husband and my family.

And I am so excited for there to be an end in sight for that.

You're gonna have so much extra time every day.

What are you gonna do?

Well, Whitney, if you had paid attention, she is going to read camp, backpack, hike, CrossFit craft, and spend time with her dogs.

Kind of like how I thought I'd learn all these new skills when I became a stay at home mom again.

And I haven't done any of them.

Those kids will take up that time real quick.

Oh, yes.

All right, Whitney, what are you thankful for today?

I'm thankful that my surgery is in the background.

I'm thankful that my healing seems to be ahead of schedule.

And yeah, goodness, I'm thankful that.

Oh, I don't even know how to word this.

That we have God on our side because parenting is not for the faint of heart.

What do you mean?

I'm thinking back.

I'm kidding.

I'm clearly kidding.

I'm thankful for, in connection with Whitney surgery, all the support we've had from our friends down here.

We have had lots of food.

We have somebody.

Whitney's small group table at church paid for laundry service, which when you have a family of eight, it's a lot of laundry.

That's awesome.

It is awesome.

It's also kind of funny.

The first round, our clothes got mixed up with the lady that was leading it.

Her family's clothes and clothes came back in a kid size that I actually recognize as no child of mine.

And it also happened to correspond with a moment.

We got clothes from a friend of ours.

We just assumed it was these new clothes that came in because we hadn't had a chance to go through it.

It was in Leah's room and we just figured she just dumped it all out and put it in one.

Well, no, it turned out it was actually their clothes.

And so that.

That's.

So now we're trying to retract all the clothes that shouldn't be in our house that made it to different rooms.

So it's been super fun.

It's just a comedy of errors, Right.

But, yes, we've been blessed beyond measure.

Yeah.

Well, Mariah, this is your show.

How about that?

Like we talked about in our last episode, May is Foster Care Awareness Month, and you're one of the.

You have maybe not every side of foster care.

You've covered a lot of the different sides of foster care.

So we definitely wanted to have you on.

Glad it timed up to have you on this month.

So you just tell your story what you wanted to.

I mean, you can start.

I think this episode also might end up getting split in two because nobody wants to listen to an hour and a half podcast.

Just start us off.

How did you.

Well, I'll ask if.

I'll actually ask a question.

Get us rolling.

It's kind of rude of me to just say, hey, go ahead, go.

How did you ever get connected with foster care?

Yeah, so when I was in middle school in Texas, my youth pastor and his wife, they were foster parents.

And that was my first introduction to foster care.

They were a younger couple, I think late 20s at the time.

And they were taking in these kids and just pouring into these kids.

And I got to know these kids.

I got to love on these kids.

I got to see the good and the hard and just really, like, open my eyes to what foster care is supposed to be.

And so as I got older and went off to college, I met my husband and I when we were dating, one of the things that I asked him about was foster care.

I wanted to make sure that whoever I would spend the rest of my life with was also willing to step into foster care and adoption with me.

And I remember one night sitting in my dorm, and I was like, I'm just going to ask him.

And I texted him and I loved his answer.

So I said, okay, guess this I can keep dating this man.

Keep, you know, following this journey.

Can you share his answer.

It was just how God's heart for is for orphans and widows, and how else could we.

Of course we would.

That's fantastic.

That's awesome.

He also had adopted sisters as well, so it was kind of already something that had been on his mind a little bit.

And so, yeah, let's do it.

And we.

After we graduated, we moved to Indiana.

We had been here about a year or so when I started working for dcs.

And I started working for DCS just because I needed a job.

I wanted a job that I could interact with kids in some way, but wasn't being, like, a daycare teacher or something like that.

And every single office in my area was hiring.

So I just submitted application after application after application to all the different offices around me.

Got a call back from one, and I got a job offer the day of my interview.

I don't know if that's because I was a great candidate or if they were desperate.

Probably both, knowing you.

I'm guessing both.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I was working as a permanency case manager, so that means I was working long term with the families, getting them resources, support services, interacting with a lot of foster and adoptive parents along the way, and just realized really quickly how important it was for foster parents to be strong Christians and to be strong advocates for their kids.

And so I was going home every night and sharing these stories with Austin and telling him just about, like, what I was going through, what I was seeing.

I've got some wild stories from my time there, but also some really good ones.

And so both he and I just felt like God was calling us to step into foster care, too.

Wow.

I love that this seed was planted for you back in middle school.

Yes.

Your youth pastor modeled that this care of orphans and children in need and.

Vulnerable children and families.

And that stuck with you.

I think that is so special and such a good reminder for us as adults that kids are watching.

Right.

What they see us do matters more than we ever realize.

What you saw shaped the course of your future, what your family looks like now.

That's incredible.

And I actually ran into Denise, who was one of the pastors at a foster and adoption conference last year out of the blue.

I didn't know she was going to be there.

She didn't know I was going to be there.

We were walking past each other, and our eyes happened to meet, and we were both, like, in complete shock.

And I got to, at the middle of this foster and adoption conference, thank her for the impact that she'd had on my life.

And that gives me chills.

It was her that had brought me to where I was and so that was just really cool just to get to.

It was at a conference in Houston that I was able to fly down for and just be able to stop and thank her for that.

Modeling that.

Such a special moment for her to see you and to hear that and to see where your life has taken you.

It was amazing.

Wow.

What are some stories that you can share from your time as a case manager that you're comfortable sharing?

Whatever you wanting.

Crazy.

Maybe like.

Maybe like one from each end of the spectrum.

Yeah.

It's sort of just like, you know, people hear the news stories.

Right.

And they think that just to shed a little bit more awareness on what actually happens in the real world day to day, whatever you want to share, whatever you're comfortable sharing.

Yeah.

So I had about 50 kids on my caseload over the three years that I was a case manager.

What was the most any snapshot?

So I think technically that's within the allowed caseload number that caseworkers can have, but it shouldn't be.

I had kids placed all over the state.

So at least one day a month I would leave my house at 4am and I would drive from my house to Evansville.

How far for people who are.

How far is that?

How many hours?

Four and a half hours.

Like you're talking one corner of the state to the other corner.

Yeah.

And then I would have to stop and see a couple other kids that were down that way and then try to squeeze in like one in Kokomo before shooting over to home.

And then another day I would have to do a northern sweep of the state and I would go up to South Bend and see a kiddo up there and working 60 hours a week regularly just trying to squeeze in at that point.

When you have 29 kids, you're not.

You're not working ahead.

You're not.

You're treading water.

You're treading water.

You're putting out fires day after day after day and it really puts you in a survival mode.

You're not.

You're not thriving, you're surviving and it's just not a great place to be.

Couple funny stories, I guess.

There was one time that I had just gotten a new case and went out to a bio parents home to meet meet her and she was not happy about me being there and she threw a vacuum at me.

Oh.

And then proceeded to throw a baby gate at me after that didn't hit me but, wow.

Might have traumatized the intern that I. I took with me that day.

Now, is this for a removal?

The kids had already been removed.

I was just meeting with her.

Oh, she was mad at you.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Just a normal everyday for me, like, oh, yeah, she threw a vacuum, but she didn't hit me.

So we're fine.

But I think the intern might have questioned wanting to do social work after that.

I want to hop in really quick.

That made me remember something I think we've shared at some point in the podcast.

My first job out of college was as a DCS worker also.

And my supervisor, I was in the intake and assessment department, so I was doing the removals.

And my supervisor at the time told me, if you ever have a question about how the parents are going to react, take the police with you.

And he said, there are three things that you don't want to mess with with people.

You don't mess with their money, you don't mess with their kids, and you don't mess with their homes.

And I always remembered that because it's true.

Like, people can go a little crazy.

So anyway, I just thought I'd share that little tip.

Little too late, right?

But I.

It's.

It's crazy.

Like, the things that I was used to as a caseworker and, yeah, me, one of my co workers, we both used to work for dc, so every once in a while we'll be sitting chatting and, oh, yeah, one time this and one time that.

And our other coworkers are sitting, like, staring at us with, like, open mouth, like, shock.

And they're like, are you okay?

And I'm like, that was just a normal Tuesday.

Like, right?

And you're.

I actually was talking to a friend today.

Like, you're talking like, oh, if you're going into a home, that's gross.

Put Vicks on your upper lip.

Or make sure you roll up your pants so they're not, like, touching the ground if there's cockroaches.

Right?

Like, don't wear flip flops.

Wear sneakers that you can run away in case you have to make sure your keys are in your hand in case you need to use them to defend yourself.

Yeah, that's like, the stuff that should.

Really be in the handbook.

Maybe you guys should do.

I was gonna say, maybe we can do an episode down the road where you two give safety tips for case managers.

Here's how far away you wait for police.

That was.

That was my life at the time.

Oh, goodness gracious.

And you did this for Four years?

Yes.

I was in permanency for almost three.

And then I was a foster care specialist for about a year and a half.

Wow.

So, yeah, I guess a fun story that I like to share that has a happy ending.

I was working on call.

I believe it was on a weekend, and it'd been a really, really long night.

I think I was going on 13 hours straight of working.

It was the middle of the night, and I had already, like, taken one child to a foster home.

Was going back to the office, they.

To drop off some stuff, and they were like, hey, can you stick around a little bit?

We might need you again.

And so I was told at that point to go to the local hospital and pick up a little baby.

I think he was about four months old at the time.

And I went and picked him up.

He had been in a car accident.

His mother was intoxicated, had crashed.

They had taken him to be evaluated.

Mom was arrested, and we had removed the baby.

The baby was naked because they'd had to take all his clothes off.

So I picked him up, took him back to the office.

We didn't have any clothes in his size.

I put him in a too small little girl's sleeper because that was all we had.

And changed his diaper on a desk because I don't feel like this is gonna have a happy ending.

Like, oh, just wait.

Just wait.

Yeah.

And she's a story.

Babe.

Babe.

So this is a sk.

She's telling a story like she's building up how bad it is, so when she gets to the good, it's that much better.

Yes, I'm aware of that.

Transported him to the foster home.

Earlier that night.

I had tripped and fallen in the dark because it was the middle of the night and scraped my knee really badly.

But I hadn't had time to look at it, address it, see how bad it was.

So I limp into this foster home with this little baby.

The foster mom was the wife of a pastor, the sweetest woman ever.

Immediately took the baby from me, made me sit down, cleaned my knee that was horribly scraped up, got me a band aid, got me some water, and sent me on my way.

And I was able to go home after that.

A couple months.

Gosh, maybe even close to a year later, I moved to the foster care unit, and I was assigned this family.

I was able to watch this child grow up for about another year and a half, help them work towards their adoption.

And right before I left dcs, I was able to go to his adoption hearing and celebrate his adoption oh, my goodness.

So, yes, it started out very horribly, but I was able, and I've been able to keep in touch with them as well and just watch him grow up and watch him just be the coolest little man ever.

That is amazing.

Only God.

Oh, that's amazing.

That's a pretty good story.

I don't know how we're going to do better than that.

Pretty good.

He says that's a pretty good story.

That's awesome.

Yes.

Wow.

What else from your days in DCS do you think is worth shedding some light on?

People may not understand.

Oh, here's a good question with foster care awareness.

Well, kind of to, you know, dive deeper from that.

Can you enlighten our listeners to appreciating what caseworkers do on a daily basis?

Right.

Like kind of a little bit of experience that way or your thoughts that way?

I have a couple perfect stories for that.

Okay.

So when I was a pretty new caseworker, I got assigned a case with a newborn baby.

I think the baby was about two weeks old when I got the case.

It was a little girl, and she was.

The concerns were neglect.

So there was concerns about mental health issues with the parents, maybe some intellectual delays, not having everything they needed to bring a baby home, not having transportation to leave the hospital.

There had been initial caseworker assigned that had left the department.

So I was stepping in when the child was about two or three weeks old.

Well, they had requested detention at one point.

So they DCS had requested to remove the baby, and it had been denied despite all these issues and all these concerns.

And so I step into this and we discovered that there's even more going on.

There's.

There's domestic violence, very severe domestic violence that the parents were not being honest about.

This was a really, really hard case for me because I knew about the neglect.

Mom was consistently not going to WIC and getting formula.

So I know the baby was going without formula.

Sometimes they were not following safe sleep.

The baby would oftentimes be sleeping on a blanket on the floor next to mom.

There were so many concerns.

And over the next year, multiple times, me and my supervisor and our attorney would go to the judge and request removal of this baby.

We would present all the concerns.

We would present the domestic violence, the neglect, the going without food.

But it kept getting denied.

Wow.

So multiple times a week, on top of juggling all my other cases, I would go to this mom's apartment just to make sure the baby was alive.

Oh, what?

My goodness.

And every single time, I would Walk up the stairs to that door.

I would just be terrified.

This was the time the baby was going to be dead.

We were getting police reports that talked about dad beating up mom, dad pushing mom down the stairs with the baby in her arms.

Like there was legitimate fear that this child could die.

And we kept getting denied.

There was one time that we were on a virtual court hearing for this case, and there was a no contact order between the parents, and we were able to see the parents violating the no contact order on the court hearing.

And you couldn't do anything about it,.

But the judge was actually legally blind and couldn't see that this was happening.

Oh, my goodness.

And so they got away with it.

And by the time I got to the apartment with police, dad had already left.

Wow.

This continued up until.

This continued for 364 days.

The day before this baby's first birthday, we finally got the order to remove her.

By that point, she'd already been severely neglected and witnessed all of this domestic violence for her first whole year of life.

And it had a huge impact on her.

I was able to follow the case to her adoption and attend her adoption hearing and everything like that.

But that case, every single time I think about it, I just get a pit in my stomach, and I just get so frustrated because I was doing what I was supposed to.

My supervisor was trying to do what she was supposed to.

We were doing the right things, offering the services, making sure all the supports in place.

But ultimately it was up to the judge.

Did they happen to that child?

Did this judge say why he denied it?

All the removals?

Every time, it would be, oh, well, Mom's gotten formula now.

Oh, there's no contact order in place, so they just need to follow it.

We need to have another episode sometime.

You and maybe Braylen, Come on.

And we can just all talk about judges.

No wonder why you're so passionate, like,.

With champions for children, too.

I don't.

Don't, don't, don't.

Don't jump ahead.

That's.

I'm not.

You already said it.

No, I did not.

In her intro.

You did well, yeah.

See, yeah, it's.

It's hard because it was ultimately a different judge that made the choice to remove that child.

It just took going in front of a different judge before we were able to do the right thing.

But it left its impact.

Right like that trauma, like the baby's been exposed.

Oh, gosh.

Another story that I.

This will scare some people a little bit, maybe.

I was assigned a case.

There was two.

Two Girls that were out of home in a foster home that was in the process of adopting them, and three kids in home with the bio parents that had a different dad along the way.

Well, back up a little bit, I guess.

I was assigned this case because another caseworker got fired.

So that's never a good starting point for a case anyways.

Right.

I was driving down the road, gave the foster mom a call at the time.

She was very frustrated and yelled at me on the phone because, you know, they thought the previous caseworker was doing what they were supposed to.

I am doing my research and seeing that they were not.

And now I have to go back in and do the legwork to push their adoption forward while I'm still trying to work with the mom and dad of the other kiddos and try to get them, you know, the help and support they need.

Along the way, we discovered that there's an issue with their youngest, a brand new baby, involving failure to thrive, broken bones, things like that.

So we are at Riley, I think it was, and we served the detention order.

The dad immediately started yelling threats and threatening to kill us and things like that, which was not the first time I'd been threatened.

My life had been threatened in that way.

But over the next couple days, it continued.

As we removed all the kids in that situation, not just the baby, the threats continued that he was going to kill us, he was going to follow us home, he was going to do things like.

Like that.

At one point, he got in my face and told me he was going to send the cartel after me.

Oh, no.

That was the first time I'd gotten a threat like that before.

We weren't sure if he had any cartel connections or anything like that.

So we're like, okay.

But the police did look into it and did discover he had cartel connections.

So we started the process of getting a no contact order in place.

Oh, my goodness.

We worked with the attorney general to get the.

Those in place and get them ordered and things like that.

And the case was given to another caseworker.

Over the next couple months, he proceeded to show up to the office, despite being told that he was not allowed to, and essentially stalk me.

It was quite a lengthy process.

He eventually ended up getting no jail time, no punishment whatsoever for his threats and stalking.

And it was, this is going to sound like a movie or made up.

He misunderstood the judge, saying no jail time, that his jail time was suspended.

Went home, beat up his wife, was arrested, went on to a work release program.

The kids had gotten to return To Mom.

At that point, mom and the kids fled the state, went to the other side of the country and were trying to hide from DCS and police there.

Were eventually found out and brought back.

By this point, these kids have been in foster care or involved with DCS their entire lives.

They're placed back in foster care.

This.

I was able to keep track of one of the girls through the foster parents even after I. I left dcs and watch how long it took even in this situation with threatening the caseworker, broken bones, all of that.

Keep an eye on what was going on.

And was able to run into them at Disney World at Christmas when we took their.

We took our kids to Disney World to celebrate their adoption.

They were also at Disney World to celebrate theirs.

No stinking way.

So that little girl that I helped detain and her dad threatened me.

Got to run into her at Disney World.

Didn't even know she was gonna be there.

How do you get to have so.

Many cool God moments?

I'm bawling in the middle of Disney World because this little girl's in front of me with Mickey ears on and a bubble on, and she's just happy and amazing.

It was amazing.

Okay.

God, this was.

Right.

That was the worst.

That's probably the worst case that I had and the scariest one and the hardest one.

But got to run into her at Disney World thriving with her family.

That is incredible.

Wow.

It was awesome.

Mariah, at least you've gotten a lot of closure on some of your stories.

I'm sure the ones that bug you the most are the ones you haven't had closure on.

Yes.

In the world of foster care.

Foster Care Awareness Month.

In the world in general of foster care.

I think a lot of times the DCS caseworkers are both the most forgotten and vilified.

Would you agree with that?

Absolutely.

How can people.

People are cognizant about serving foster parents.

How can people serve caseworkers?

How can we help caseworkers be successful?

Absolutely.

I get to do some of that in my job.

So our church set asides budget every year to be able to serve our caseworkers through lunches and gifts.

That's amazing.

Kudos to them.

I love that.

I love that.

That's part of my job.

What a privilege.

Yeah.

To get to do that.

I get to go back.

I get to pour into these caseworkers that some of them I worked alongside during my time there.

Oh, that's cool.

And get to be able to minister to them in this position.

I think that Individuals can do similar things.

They can write notes to caseworkers, they can drop off donuts, they can drop off lunch, they can drop off gifts, drop off energy drinks, water sodas.

Just so true.

Yeah.

Simple things that just bless the caseworkers and help them, you know, when they're in those middle of the night detentions, they're going to need those energy drinks.

That is such a good idea.

Just like, just a little Costco or Sam's Club cases.

And here you go.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah.

What, what, what's the energy drink of choice for caseworkers?

Monster and Aulani Alani.

Yep, Yep.

Those are the, the two that I get the most requests for.

Okay.

We stock a couple offices, coffee bars every couple months.

Will refill their K cups and their tea and their, you know, coffee syrups and things like that.

But individuals can do that too, and step into that space and just let caseworkers know that they're praying for them, that they have their back.

Just, you know, not engaging with the news when it comes to stories about caseworkers and dcs.

Knowing that there's probably two sides to that story.

When they say it's a broken system, they.

Yeah, it's not.

An individual does not cause this chaos.

And so it's not.

Yeah, it's not the individual caseworker's fault.

They're.

They're doing the best they can with what they have, and they're doing it with not enough pay, not enough sleep, not enough food.

Well, when you over, whenever you give somebody too much work they're capable of doing, they can't do the work.

Well.

No, no.

Yeah.

I think back to my time at dcs and I don't know how I survived as long as I did.

I. Yeah, I'm glad to not be there anymore.

I'm glad to be able to bless caseworkers from this side of things as.

We wrap up the dcs.

Go ahead, Whitney.

I'm just.

No, I'm just.

It's such an honor to get to serve people in that way, especially when you've been in that space.

Right.

And you've been on the receiving end of the hatred.

Right.

And the judgment and the meanness, like.

Yes.

Yeah, it's.

It's a hard, hard space to be in, but there's also so much good.

And so there really is.

For every one bad, bad egg, there's.

There's a million more that are doing the right thing.

And so I think people just need.

To remember that as we wrap up what is one Thing about DCS caseworkers, you want what you just shared might be the answer.

But what's one additional thing you would want People who.

What's the most misunderstood thing?

What's one thing you want everybody to.

Understand that they're just normal people trying to make a difference.

Every single person that gets into social work, that gets into case management is doing so because they want to make a difference.

And so just keeping that in mind and knowing that they are trying to do good, that they're trying to do their best, their goal is not to put kids in danger.

Their goal is not to make foster parents lives difficult.

They're juggling a million things that we will never see.

So true.

What a good reminder.

I would challenge everybody listening.

Yes.

Go serve a foster family.

Serve a foster kid.

Don't forget about those caseworkers.

As Mariah shared, they do a ton.

And I think they are the most overlooked and underappreciated group in this whole broken system.

Absolutely.

I'm so glad you shed light on that.

I love talking about my time as a caseworker.

Yeah, it's not talked about enough.

Right.

And with our podcast, we haven't really covered that either.

And you know, when we talk about dreaming small, there are so many ways you can live that out while blessing the people who are truly in the trenches of this system.

Absolutely.

All right, Mariah, thank you so much for the time that you spent with us today.

What a blessing it is to have you and to hear your story and honestly, like, this is like the top of the iceberg for you because you have so much more.

She'll be there, so much more wisdom and experience that I want you to share.

I want our listeners to hear.

So I'm so thankful for your willingness to be on and I hope to.

Have you on again soon.

And listeners, you guys, you just got a lot of really great ideas for how you can dream small this weekend.

In the weeks to come.

So thank you for being here.

Mariah.

We really.

You're our hero, truly.

You're a rock star.

So thank you.

And until next week, you guys, keep dreaming small.

Thank you for listening to the Dream Small podcast.

If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please tap that follow button and leave us a review.

It helps other people find my mom and dad's show.

If you're on Spotify, please give my parents a follow and a five star rating.

And wherever you listen, don't forget to share that the show with us friend who needs a little encouragement today.

You can also follow us on social media to stay in the loop.

Instagram, DreamSmall podcast, Facebook, Dream Small Podcast, Twitter or x dreamsmallshow or email us anytime@dreamsmompodcastmail.com we love hearing from you and remember, just dream small.

See you next time.