Social work can be one of the most difficult jobs there is.

Back in February, some social workers spoke before lawmakers in Frankfurt about the challenges they face while conducting child welfare investigations.

While we have a fantastic police department, we've had police tell us that they're not going out to home visits with us because of the neighborhood that they're in or the situation that we're being called out on just because they're not coming out.

That doesn't mean that we're not going to go out with our notepad and and a pen and try to figure out what's going on, how we can best protect the family, make sure that the kids are safe and figure out where we go from there.

There is nobody at this table that has not answered the phone for hours, that has not went above and beyond what their actual job duties are to ensure that a child has what they need, whether it be at the time of the removal or whether it be six months out after the removal.

We're the only consistent that some of these children have in their lives.

The University of Kentucky College of Social Work says it wants current and future social workers to be prepared for what they will encounter on the job.

The college has introduced new virtual reality technology.

It says give students more hands on training, which in turn will help them better serve Kentucky's children and families.

You actually don't see a lot of kind of these immersive trainings in these public child welfare spaces.

Several months ago, we started and launched what we are calling the E Service Initiative.

And that initiative was really a recognition that the future of social service is going to be in the digital and tax base.

During COVID, we started to transition to more virtual learning platforms and figuring out how we could meet the needs of the community and meet the needs of our students.

And so this ideal of a virtual reality platform where students could practice came up.

We can do papers and we can do class activities and we can do role plays and things.

But it's really difficult to capture the true essence of what it's like to go out and investigate an incidence of child maltreatment.

This allows for a depth of experience that you can't mimic in any other space.

When you're talking to families, you have to be able to notice what's going on in the environment.

You have to be able to see indicators that you wouldn't be able to set up in the classroom necessarily.

And so this allows them to kind of practice that.

We've modeled these case in virtual scenarios on actual cases in terms of incidents of child abuse and neglect.

Through the VR interaction, you conduct your interviews and you craft prevention plans.

You do your collateral and follow up visits.

So it's really a way to engage and experience the full continuum of what an investigation is.

We didn't want to put someone in that situation where they're stuck in a room in the corner there and their clients become angry.

But virtually they can do that in a safe space so they can learn how to respond, how to use.

How do you use these skills to de-escalate it?

And so that allows them to practice their skills in a safe space.

I told you that the person who came to provide you a service was going to be more competent, better prepared, more confident in their ability.

You would say that's a good thing.

And I would agree.

And so in terms of the way that it's improving services or improving the lives of children and families, it's doing just that.

J. Miller says another advantage of the VR simulation is it can be used as an exploratory tool for students who are trying to determine if they want to become social workers.