Protecting the Shadow: A Year Inside Adult Protective Services

by Paul D. Buchanan

The mass media traditionally portrays social workers in a fairly passive light, often depicting them as little more than assistants to the law enforcement or legal professions. For those who accept this portrait, Protecting the A Year Inside Adult Protective Services, will provide a substantial jolt. Real social work regularly features episodes of nail-biting intensity and outrageous personalities, to which the author's own career in the profession can attest. Protecting the Shadow presents the adventures of five social workers, a deputy public guardian, and a public health nurse. Set at the suburban offices Cedarwood County Adult Protective Services (CAPS), the CAPS unit encounters a myriad of cases affecting everyone from the very rich to the desperately poor. These cases explore issues from the shadow side of sexual assault, senile dementia, fiduciary abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, undue influence, and uninhabitable environments. Nicknamed the "Do Something Crew", these seven individuals attempt to respond to the health and safety needs of frail elderly and dependent adults, while protecting them from an often unsympathetic and unkind world. A recent survey of the local library catalogue revealed more than eighty seven titles under the heading of social work. However, this collection consists largely of dry reworks of case studies, which fail to capture the drama and complexity of these real life situations. Protecting the Shadow has elements of both fiction and non-fiction. It offers the inside perspective on the day-to-day functions of a suburban adult protective services office. The personalities, situations, strategies, and the outcomes are all based on actual cases. At the same time, the names and locations have been fictionalized in the interests of confidentiality, and the book reads like a modern adventure or detective novel. Readers who do not understand society's role for the social worker will find a stark revelation; those curious about entering the human service field will gain an invaluable introduction. Social workers - and all who labor in public human services agencies - will find camaraderie in, and validation for, their labors. The story would make a good movie or even a TV series, as the situations depicted are but a small sample of the true life situations in which social workers find themselves. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to APS.

218 pages, Paperback