Emily M. McGhee is a child welfare supervisor at Counseling & Family Services, and a single, adoptive mother of one child. McGhee received an associate’s degree in liberal arts from Illinois Central College in 1977. She received her bachelor’s degree from Illinois State University and her master’s degree in social work with a school specialization from the University of Illinois in 1983. In 1979 she began work at the Peoria Association of Retarded Citizens as a social development specialist. In 1981 she was a caseworker in the multi-services for single parents program with Counseling & Family Services. While pursuing her master’s degree, McGhee was a counselor for the Equal Opportunity Program at the University of Illinois.
After obtaining her MSW, McGhee returned to Counseling & Family Services where she was an adoption caseworker for many years. This led to her current position as a child welfare supervisor. McGhee received a national award from the North American Council of Adoptable Children. She’s served on several boards and committees including the YWCA, Harrison Youth Center, Heart of Illinois OURS group, and Habitat for Humanity.
What’s your family background?
To tell you a little about my family, there was me, of course, and my brother. He was considered the middle child because we had a cousin who lived with us and, in every sense of the word, my cousin was my brother, too. So there were the three of us.
We grew up in Peoria Heights, right on the border. If I walked across the street I was in Peoria. If I walked onto my side of the street I was in the Heights. On my side of the street the majority of the families were white, and if you walked on the other side the majority were black. Because of the side of the street I lived on, I attended Peoria Heights schools.
We were one of the first black families to enter into the school district, and I remember my father saying to us that with being first comes responsibility. The Heights was like a small community where people knew each other and looked after each other. My father had to prove to the neighbors that he was okay and that he had the same values and beliefs they did. So when my brother first went to school, the neighbors sent out the message that “the McGhee kids are coming. Welcome them and take care of them.” We had proven ourselves and become part of the community. That was very, very important.
How did your early experiences set the stage for you later in life?
I gained a sense of how important family values are and how important neighbors are. When I think about my early childhood, I think about how special it was in that everyone took care of each other, everyone knew each other. If there was a widow, the men would take the responsibility of being like a father to her children, making sure their needs were taken care of, making sure they had enough food, and fixing anything that had broken down.
You’ve told stories about how your father influenced you to care for others. Would you share them with us?
My father didn’t have a lot of education, but he had a lot of morals, values and beliefs. He strongly believed in take care of the community and giving back to people. One thing that my father would do was go to Spring Bay and work with tow men who had a great big farm, and they would plant different vegetables. My father would come back with a car full of watermelons, corn and tomatoes and pass them out to people in the neighborhood. That’s what he believed in. On Saturday mornings our driveway would be filled with kids’ bikes for my father to fix. If the kids had any problems, he would sit down and talk with them. I was always around him, like his shadow. You know how sometimes you’ll go with your mother, or sometimes you’ll go with your father? I was always with my father, every step he took. I think I am who I am today because of him.
How has your mother influenced you?
My mother’s a very strong individual. She knew where she was going and what she wanted out of life. She expressed her opinions very early and very openly. There was a time when it was a big deal to men if women cut their hair anyway, and she was going to wear whatever she wanted to wear.
She also insisted that my father equally share in parenting of the kids. So, I’m independent like my mother.
What led you to become a social worker?
I was the type of kid who loved people. I still love talking to people. When I lived on Wisconsin Avenue, which was a major street that everyone traveled, I remember elderly white ladies coming down the street, and I’d be waiting for them to get by the fence so I could say hi to them. At first these ladies ignored me and sort of blew me off, but every stretch of the way I’d walk, inside my yard along my fence, saying “Hi how are you doing? You know me? My name is Emily? You know who my father is Norman McGhee. My mother is Ida.” As they continued to walk, I continued to walk along the fence and try to talk to them. It got to the point that they were eventually worn down because this was a route they always had to go. Finally, they started looking for me and started saying hi.
Maybe that was the start of my interviewing style, because when I think about it, I had to engage these women. I had to get them to talk. I had to get them to the point where they trusted me. I figured out if I could do that at 5 years old, it was a natural for me to go into the field of social work.
What is your primary job at Counseling & Family Services?
I am a child welfare supervisor and, along with the program coordinator, I supervise all the workers in the foster care program. I also supervise the adoption program, including foreign adoption, and the community outreach program, which includes our northside office – working with the Peoria Housing Authority, the Bigelow Project and the Central Bluff Neighborhood Association.
What types of situations do you get involved in?
Keep in mind that one of our biggest societal problems is drug and alcohol abuse. The workers encounter a lot of child abuse situations. It is not uncommon for a worker to be told by a neighbor that down the street there is a home with three or four young children who are left home alone all day and night by their mother. When the worker knocks at the door and is greeted by an 8- or 10- year-old who is home alone assuming the parental responsibilities of the younger siblings. This child has become an adult before his time and has learned all the basic survival skills. This child has learned to get all the kids up and send them to school so they can have at least two meals to eat that day (free school breakfast and lunch program). The school age siblings can bring food home for the younger siblings.
This older child is not going to school because he or she had to take care of the non-school age children. Truancy is now a problem. This child knows that within time there will be a knock on the door and the social workers will remove the children from their home and from their parent.
Often this child has taken care of the siblings and also the parent. So the knock on the door brings about feelings of relief, but also guilt that the child could not keep it all together.
A sad fact is that this child tries to continue to parent when placed in a foster home, and it is now difficult to be just a child.
How do you feel that drugs have affected families?
The main drugs are crack and cocaine, with heroin coming in a close third. What’s interesting about crack and cocaine is that it crosses all racial and income lines. These drugs have done the impossible-they have broken the bonding and attachment between a mother and a child. The number of women who are addicted to crack and cocaine is increasing. This is the leading reason why a number of children are entering the foster care system.
These children have to relocate to a new home and school, and now have social workers involved in their lives. The children are often angry at their mom and the system, and they have developed a distrust for almost everyone.
To make things worse, some of the children may experience a foster care placement disruption, causing feelings of rejection and reinforcing their distrust of people. Although, as a worker, you do everything to try and prevent a placement disruption, sometimes this is out of your control.
I once had a client whose daughter was addicted to cocaine who stated, “You people in the system treat everyone the same. We are different from those people.” My response was that cocaine has no color, income or gender preference. It destroys us all the same way.
I think it is important that we do not forget the effects of alcohol. Alcohol has also destroyed a lot of families. Today we are finding out how alcohol can affect a fetus. A number of children have been diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effect.
You’ve talked about women and drug abuse. What about men?
I have a male community outreach worker named Ricky Walker who works with young and adult males. He has often commented that men tend to deal with drug and alcohol abuse like any other problem in their lives-flight. They tend to leave and not assume any responsibilities. They do not want their significant others to see them down and out. Their issues become too overwhelming and they cannot see how to break their problems down into concrete manageable steps. Instead of working on their problems, they do nothing.
Ricky frequently comments that it is difficult for men to easily open up and share personal information about themselves. He said that when he did develop a trusting relationship with his clients, the most frequent concerns they shared were their desires to be good fathers and financially able to take care of their children. Having stable employment, drug dealing and/or usage, and gang activity are self-defeating answers for an immediate problem. Leaving and not assuming responsibility is an even worse solution.
How do you work with clients in the community?
The treatment modality is home-based services that include individual and family counseling and referrals to local community organizations. Workers have found it more effective to go where the clients are, which is usually in their home,
Clients are usually leery of agencies, and their defenses are up no to trust social workers. Therefore, the first few sessions are spent getting to know the client and establishing a rapport. Simply listening and letting the client express his needs is very important to the therapeutic process.
Community outreach workers often have been where the clients are now, so disclosure of their past experiences often aids in the engagement of clients. This is the door that allows workers to provide a little reality therapy, because they can pick up on the games that some clients play and confront them with it. In turn, clients are more apt to receive and listen to workers because they know the workers have played these games themselves.
CFS is fortunate to have a group of volunteers who donate their time to work with adults and children in the community. We have a young man who, in the past, has been involved with gang activity and drugs. Today, he is married and working in his family business. He especially likes working with children, and the children love him.
We have a young lady who in the past had a drug history, involvement with the law, and involvement with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Today, she is a successful business woman, co-leads a couple of our support groups, and works closely with one of our community outreach workers providing home-based services.
CFS also had several community rallies, which included representative form a Tandem, a temporary job service, who passed out job applications and made appointments to meet with individuals looking for employment. Friendship House sent a representative to sign people up for GED classes and summer camp programs for children. Illinois Central College had someone there to answer questions, and the Peoria Health Department had someone conducting high blood pressure checks. The Central Bluff Neighborhood Association provided clowns, and several local churches sent members to provide spiritual counseling and support.
Are we doing anything different and unique? No, we are just using community resources to strengthen family systems.
What’s involved in community outreach?
CFS has three community outreach workers. Their responsibilities include mentoring to the youth, providing individual and family counseling, facilitating communication between the home and school, and making referrals to community organizations. Workers are there to assist families in emergency situations like obtaining food, help with utilities, and housing. They are at the hospital when a family member is sick, they attend a funeral of a loved one, and they are at the police station and/or courthouse when a family member violates the law.
Do you feel that your program is successful?
Yes, I do because now we have people calling into CFS. We had a telephone call from a young male who had been using crack and wanted to join our support group. We had a call from a single mother of three teenaged sons involved in gang and drug activities. She stated they were out of control and she didn’t know what to do. Mentoring young people has become a big part of our program.
Our program is successful because we have volunteers who are willing to make the time and commitment to work with people, and because of our community outreach workers.
Our program’s successes may be bittersweet. There was a young mother who was on drugs and became involved with DCFS. She did everything she needed to do to get her children returned back to her care, but she never did deal with the reason why she turned to drugs. When her children were returned home, she was not emotionally prepared for them. She used drugs the day her children came home. She became depressed and contemplated suicide. She started going back to the crack houses, leaving her children alone in the home. Our community outreach worker took the woman out of the crack house and was able to help the woman verbalize her feelings that she was not ready for her children to return home. The children were placed back in foster care. Is this a success? Yes. Now, the mother is working on her issues. One day, hopefully, she will be prepared for her children and they will never be returned back into the system.
Why do you like your job?
What I really like is the people, whether it’s those in the work environment or my clients. When I was doing a lot of direct service, I met people form all walks of life. I remember working with a prospective adoptive couple. Both of them were professors at universities. The father had attended Julliard…you know he had to be top of the line. Part of the process is to go to the prospective family’s home to make sure it is safe and that they have enough room. I went to their home and asked the prospective father to play something on the piano. He played classical music, which I really didn’t have an interest in. But when he got off that piano bench-I’m never going to forget it-he was sweating from head to toe. I had never heard music played like that; I didn’t have any words. So I stood up in the middle of the room and clapped.
That was all I could do. Those are the types of people I’ve met in my job.
When I say I like people and the work environment, I work with what I call the “whiz kids.” They’re young, their hearts are in their jobs, they’re motivated. When I look at them and the dedication they have, it motivates me to go on.
What are some of the major concerns and challenges as a professional in social work today?
I think the bureaucratic system ahs a way of creating a lot of paperwork and barriers. Not one social worker has said, “I’m going to enter the field of social work to do paperwork.”
We have gotten away from our basic principle of what we’re all about-about working with people. We need to get back to that.
What other areas do you dislike about your profession?
The pay. We’re dealing with human beings. We’re dealing with societal problems. We’re dealing with some biggies here and the pay is not reflective of the monumental tasks that we do. If we see that our priorities are maintaining family systems or dealing with drug and alcohol abuse or domestic violence or whatever, then you need to invest the money in adequately compensating workers for the work they do.
What qualities do you look for in a potential employee?
One of the basic qualities I look for in a child welfare worker is the ability to engage people. If you don’t have that, then you’re not going to be successful in social service, period.
You enter into someone’s life. You have to make them feel comfortable and trust you. Part of that is the way you communicate-your body language and your ability to make that person feel comfortable. One of my mentors, my field placement supervisor, said to me, “If you don’t have the ability to engage, you don’t need to be in the field. But if you do have those skills, I can teach you the rest.”
I, too, can teach a staff member how to write a court report or how to do a service plan, but I cannot teach how to engage people.
What I also think is important is the ability to adapt to change while maintaining a positive attitude. A positive attitude leads to a more productive and creative work environment. Your clients pick it up, your co-workers pick it up, and I think you get more done with a positive attitude.
What is a social worker’s number one goal?
To advocate for the clients’ positive change.
What major trend do you see for Counseling and Family Services in the next five to ten years?
We’ll be doing a lot more community outreach. We’re going to be more visible in the community. We are now working with the Central Bluff area, and have a community social worker who is familiar with all the families who live in that area. He is familiar with the school systems, and knows the principles. CFS is really getting more intimate, more in touch with families there: we know what problems they have and we know their strengths.
How has a composition of the family changed since you first started in the field of social work?
I think the definition of family has changed. When you think about a family, you think about a nuclear family, such as a mother, father, and children. I thinks it’s different now for all sorts of reasons. A family can now include extended family members living together. We see siblings living together-brothers and sisters sharing apartments and housing. Because of the high rent in the Peoria area, we see friends or cousins living together. We see divorced couples who are remarrying and bringing their kids into a blended family situation. We see gay and lesbian couples. All of these types are committed to care for one another and constitute families of a sort. I, myself, have my mother living with me. She helps take care of my daughter while I’m at work.
Counseling & Family Services moved to the heart of downtown at 330 S.W. Washington in the fall of 1995. Why?
When John Rush, our executive director, came to CFS, we had a meeting in our old building, which we had outgrown. We had staff working in the kitchen area, and eight or nine workers down in the basement. At one staff meeting he said to us, “Visualize your dream building. What would you like to see in the building?” Everybody was telling him what the wanted in the building-visitation rooms, a play therapy room. Everyone had input. John Rush made that dream come true. The building represents everything we wanted.
Why in the downtown area? It’s visible, it’s accessible to bus lines, and it’s in the heart of a growing, developing area that will only get more visible as downtown redevelopment continues.
Do you know what plans the agency has for its former site on Knoxville Avenue?
Basically our plans and our dreams are to use that building for community outreach to provide services to families within the Central Bluff area. When I think of that building, I dream of a facility that has social workers and attorneys. If people walk in off the street and need help, someone will be there.
It’s a place for senior citizens to go have a cup of coffee and to socialize with one another. If they feel like it, they could go into the kitchen and bake some biscuits. They could go to the nursery and hold their kids or work with the mothers.
It’s a place where a drug addict could come and say that he had been using for three or four days and was tired and needed help. Someone there will help him.
This has always been my vision for the building on Knoxville. It’s a community facility, a place where people can go and get help in whatever form they need. Because is will take additional funding to turn our Knoxville site into a neighborhood center, we’re looking for businesses and other funding sources to buy into the concept and help support our vision.
How will welfare reform affect the work you do at CFS?
Hopefully, with welfare reform people are going to become more self sufficient. Saying that, they are going to need to get the skills in order to get the jobs. I would like to network with businesses in the area and numerous other social service agencies and educational institutions to provide educational programs.
I believe in utilizing every asset in the community. I believe in utilizing the community to help the client become stronger and self sufficient. So that’s the direction I see our agency going.
You’re a single woman who recently adopted a daughter. Why?
Over the years I’ve placed over 250 kids for adoption. I was always interested in adopting, but it was finding the right time. Now I know there’s never a right time when you’re trying to decide whether or not to have a child.
I received this call one day from a friend who is our agency attorney. It was a Friday afternoon around 4 o’clock. She said, “Emily, I have a prospective birth mother I’m going to be meeting with on Monday. Do you have any adoptive families?” I started listing off all my adoptive families. Mind you, I took this call when a lot of staff people were around, and she said, “What about you?” When she said that, it was like Boom! She told me to think about it over the weekend and give her a call back on Monday. Well, from the time she said, “What about you?” it was yes.
I went to the maternity ward with tears just flowing-my mother was with me-and I said, “I’m Emily McGhee, here to pickup my daughter.” I went into this room and there’s this nurse. I’m never going to forget this; she was like a military nurse who’d been there 30 years. I was still crying and I could see the little bassinet right behind her and she’s guarding Brianna. I’m trying to look around her because this is going to be my first glance at my daughter.
All of a sudden the nurse moved just a little and I caught a glimpse of Brianna. She was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen in my life. She may have been the ugliest baby, I don’t know, but to me she was gorgeous and she was my daughter, and I cried harder.
Finally the nurse said, “Honey, take your child.” She gave me Brianna and I held her in my arms and I couldn’t believe it. I have dealt with kids all of my life, but I was so nervous I couldn’t put Brianna’s clothes on her. All I could see was this life that I was going to be responsible for the rest of my life. It was just overwhelming.
Because of Brianna and the joy she brings into my life and the sense of responsibility, my hours were cut. I no longer take a briefcase in my hand when I leave here. I’ve made changes in my life to accommodate Brianna and they’re the best changes I have ever made.
Adoption is not second best. That’s something I want people to understand. It is first rate, and when I look at my daughter, it’s the best thing that ever happened to my life. In fact, I want to do it again.
I look at Brianna, and she is the center of attention. She needs to learn the concept of sharing. Now she doesn’t have to work for anything. Life is not going to be that way all the time. I think you get a lot out of sibling relationship. It’s for her, but it’s also for me. I want another child, maybe when Brianna gets about 3 years old and into school, and I can convince my mother, who takes care of Brianna when I’m at work, that it’s ok to bring another child in.
God worked it out where everything just fell into place. Adoption came at a good time for me. It was a good time for my mother, and, in turn, it was a good time to give Brianna a home.
What final thoughts would you like to add about social work?
Don’t enter the field of social work for the wrong reason. Don’t enter into the field to resolve some of your unmet needs, because if you do that you’re going to become enmeshed with the client.
If you genuinely do not like people, communicating with people, or interacting with them, don’t enter into the field. Because, if you don’t like working with people, you can’t hide it. The relationship isn’t going to work. That may sound simple, but it’s the bottom line. TPW