Instead of social workers and their stuffy state offices, kids visiting the Children’s Administration offices in downtown Vancouver Monday got superheroes, fairy tale characters and Disney.
Around Halloween for the last 11 years, Department of Social and Health Services workers have remade their offices and cubicles into a costumed adventure for client children.
Workers remade one section into scenes from “The Little Mermaid,” complete with a staffer’s daughter as Ariel and piles of her gadgets, gizmos, whosits and whatsits.
Others turned their office rows into scenes from fairy tales, with Rapunzel letting down her hair over a cardboard wall at her office door, and Hansel and Gretel, complete with lederhosen.
Naturally, the kids also get plenty of candy.
They come home fully loaded, Michelle Fowler said at the start of the tour as one of her daughters grinned with excitement.
Fowler and her husband, Gary, brought their six adopted kids and have been trick-or-treating at the DSHS office for about seven years.
“It’s pretty fun. The kids really look forward to it, and the social workers really put in a lot of work and love,” she said. “You can tell.”
Along with their children, they’ve also brought children they looked after for foster programs.
“Sometimes kids in foster care, they’ve never been trick-or-treating,” she said.
“Some of them have never done — anything,” her husband chimed in. “Gone to a movie, sleep in a real bed.”
The first section had a “Trolls” theme, with papier-mache flowers, pastel colors and social workers with tall, conical, bright-colored wigs.
The office staff set it up as a unit-by-unit competition for the kids’ votes, said Miranda Nigrey, a social worker.
“But it’s all about getting to see out kids in costume and having fun,” she said. “Because we’re here for the kids and want to celebrate them when we can.”
The parents and guardians also like to see the social workers looking silly in costume, she joked.
In other sections, kids walked through Wonderland and met Alice, then through two levels from “Super Mario Bros.” (with music). In another, they walked through a sheet that doubled as a projection screen for “Batman” movie scenes, and into a Gotham-themed cityscape, with one worker handing out candy through the “bars” of his cubicle, made to look like a cell at Arkham Asylum.
Social workers Mariah Schenck and Beija Brindley, who had a section festooned with superhero flair, joked that their strategy to win the contest was to make a theme the most appealing to children.
“They love that we do this,” Brindley said. “We love that we do it too.”
Schenck said it helps everyone — kids, parents and staff — get to see each other in way that’s less professional and more personal.
“And the kids, too, can see other foster kids and be like, ‘OK, I’m not alone,” she said.
“This is not always the happiest place for kids to be,” Brindely added. “It’s nice to see it turned into something magical.”
Kira Lewis Carter and Beth Kutzera, area administrators for the Clark County Children’s Administration offices, said the staff probably spends a month getting ready for the Halloween event, with a few days of frenzied decorating right before, and it’s all on their own time and with their own money.
“This is not something that we could stop, because there would be a resistance standing at the door regardless,” Kutzera said.
They saw 314 trick-or-treaters this year, she said, up from 180 last year.
It’s a big office, she said, so it’s a way to bring the staff together. What’s more, they get to see the kids be happy.
“Social workers got into his field because they’re passionate about working with children and families,” Lewis Carter said, so seeing everyone have such a good time is rewarding.
This year, Gary Fowler said as his family was leaving the DSHS office, the social workers and other office staff members outdid themselves.
“I don’t know how they’re going to top it next year.”
