As for the hand thing, Dawn was picking up on Anita's reaction to Richard. Following the event in Danse Macabre, when Richard gave Anita that cross and it burned into her hand -- I decided that Anita needed to have a negative reaction to being burned so badly (literally and figeratively) by Richard.

I'm not sure what real social workers do, but it makes sense for there to be some kind of emergency placement system. It must be odd, for Nathaniel, to be on the opposite side of the foster care system.