Social workers

[ajm]

Note that everything I have to say here refers to the child "protection" arm of social work, not carers etc.

Taffy, you have my greatest sympathy... I was closely involved in something similar, although in this case there was a clear personal agenda on the part of one social worker and one or two local health "professionals", with a really awful, spiteful, manipulative and downright dishonest female police officer. Did I mention the malicious young classroom assistant (her own debauched life a complete mess) and the weak, inadequate and double-faced school headmistress who conveniently left the country after helping getting the ball rolling?

Once you have two or more of these so called "professional" branches on the same track against you, there is almost nothing at all that you can do; while "they" can fill their fictional reports with all the injustices, insults and malicious lies they like, all your facts, truth and evidence doesn't count for a fig (supposing you are actually permitted to give it - usually it's misrepresented and twisted.)

While there may (and statistically there must) be such a thing as an honest social worker, from what I have seen they are a vanishing minority, and will be crushed and expelled from a terrifyingly Orwellian system which is rotten to the very core. Funnily enough, exactly what happened to the fairly decent guy who was subsequently called in to investigate the mess and was none too complimentary about the way it was handled.

CharlieBoy, your attitude brought it all back to me in a flash - "shut your face you ignorant nobodies, WE know what's going on in your family and we'll do what we like about it - you're irrelevant and powerless."

One last thing... don't think that SW only prey on the run-down council estate dwelling drug abusing parents (those are too scary to deal with.) I am talking about a perfectly middle class, well known and "respectable" family - in their sick, twisted minds, social workers love to demonise this type, probably through a kind of (subconcious, no doubt) envy in a lot of cases.

 

[greenstiles]

Again I think real accounts hold a lot of weight here.

On the course I witnessed about 12 social workers argue and embelish fitional case studies trying to score points over one another by adding more and more detail of what could be wrong with the fitional individual/family. Many eye brows were raised by others including myself as to ' they should be keeping it real'. I think this is where they learn their inch/mile skills.

On the smoking break, I overheard one on the attendees who knew the tutor (a SW) saying, ' you love to bully people don't you ? '' referring to where she refused to take another professionals valid opinion........her answer, was '' yes, i like to wind people up''.........I carried on pretending I hadn't heard, ate my lunch and read my Sun news paper that I've suddenly started to read.

 

[Charlieboy28]

Note that everything I have to say here refers to the child "protection" arm of social work, not carers etc.

Taffy, you have my greatest sympathy... I was closely involved in something similar, although in this case there was a clear personal agenda on the part of one social worker and one or two local health "professionals", with a really awful, spiteful, manipulative and downright dishonest female police officer. Did I mention the malicious young classroom assistant (her own debauched life a complete mess) and the weak, inadequate and double-faced school headmistress who conveniently left the country after helping getting the ball rolling?

Once you have two or more of these so called "professional" branches on the same track against you, there is almost nothing at all that you can do; while "they" can fill their fictional reports with all the injustices, insults and malicious lies they like, all your facts, truth and evidence doesn't count for a fig (supposing you are actually permitted to give it - usually it's misrepresented and twisted.)

While there may (and statistically there must) be such a thing as an honest social worker, from what I have seen they are a vanishing minority, and will be crushed and expelled from a terrifyingly Orwellian system which is rotten to the very core. Funnily enough, exactly what happened to the fairly decent guy who was subsequently called in to investigate the mess and was none too complimentary about the way it was handled.

CharlieBoy, your attitude brought it all back to me in a flash - "shut your face you ignorant nobodies, WE know what's going on in your family and we'll do what we like about it - you're irrelevant and powerless."

One last thing... don't think that SW only prey on the run-down council estate dwelling drug abusing parents (those are too scary to deal with.) I am talking about a perfectly middle class, well known and "respectable" family - in their sick, twisted minds, social workers love to demonise this type, probably through a kind of (subconcious, no doubt) envy in a lot of cases.

if by me, very naturally i feel, defending my profession from people who have no idea of what my profession entails, leads you to reach the conclusion that my attitude is one of "shut your face you ignorant nobodies" you are clearly mistaken.

so you had a police officer, a head mistress, a classroom assistant and two health professionals all who shared the same concerns yet it was obvilously a malicious conspiracy?

we dont know whats going on in peoples families, its the children that are powerless, for some reason dad doesnt tell us when he is sexually abusing his children, or mother doesnt tell us when her boyfriend is beating her child, or when the baby ( who cant speak) stays in its cot for 22 hours a day because of mothers drug use. They all tell me they are parent of the year strangely.

erm i spend the vast , majority of my time on run down coucil estates, poverty is a large part of the problems people face you see, working with gang members, drug dealers, drug users, paedophiles etc etc, and have never been too scared to do my job, but as already said i fully appreciate that abuse of children goes on regardless of social class.

 

[Charlieboy28]

Again I think real accounts hold a lot of weight here.

On the course I witnessed about 12 social workers argue and embelish fitional case studies trying to score points over one another by adding more and more detail of what could be wrong with the fitional individual/family. Many eye brows were raised by others including myself as to ' they should be keeping it real'. I think this is where they learn their inch/mile skills.

.

so you observed 12 social workers applying critical reflection to a case study, based on extensive training, theory and practice knowledge ,trying to appreciate the complexity of what was possibley going on with a family , and you had a problem with that.

you know i agree with you, what we need is real accounts from real children who were experiencing real abuse, and how they were helped by social services, there are thousands and thousands of them per year you know

 

[greenstiles]

And they thousands of families wrongly accused of neglect etc, who have to deal with the stress of false accusations, because their social worker is following a model of action instead of using common sence.

I passed the wishy washy course too, it was totally useless, and impractical to reallity, and other non SW thought so too.

What i and others witnessed was adding 'fantasy to the facts' regarding case study.


What I did hear a lot of was, i'm a professional, when your a professional,I didn't witness anything I could be impressed by.

All the other courses i've attended over the years never have i heard very qualified people try to brag that thay are a professional and why people should listen to them.

I don't think the good work that SW do cancels out the really shoddy stuff they do, it's not professional !

How you can ignore the end result stories other others on here i don't know.

You may be a great social worker and i hope you are, but your attitude to other peoples experiences stinks, big time.

I'm off to start about hair dye !

 

[ajm]

so you had a police officer, a head mistress, a classroom assistant and two health professionals all who shared the same concerns yet it was obvilously a malicious conspiracy?

Yes, it was, without any doubt. The primary social worker involved had been personally known to the accused since childhood and should never have been permitted to be involved in the first place.

I'm not saying that all the self-proclaimed "professionals" (not that I witnessed very much "professional" behaviour from any of them) were knowingly part of the malicious conspiracy; all it takes is one malicious complaint ("anonymous", of course) and a whole lot of paranoid, incompetent and ill-adjusted social workers / teachers etc can chip in with their "concerns".

The criminal thing was, in this case, that the only actual abuse that ever took place was at the hands of the teacher who was happily filing violence and agression reports about the pupil (who was and is not violent or agressive; stubborn, certainly.)

Do you think it right that a consultant paediatrician give one verdict based on his physical examinations and subsequently give a completely different one after being leaned on by social work?

They all tell me they are parent of the year strangely.

Yeah, heard that one too, and came closer to throttling the lying, patronising, tergiversating fool of a social worker than I care to remember, such was the anger provoked. Any child (no matter how adult they are, with their own families even) who supports their parents in these matters is either disregarded entirely or added to the list of suspicious deviants. Do you know what? There's a very good chance that when people are telling you that their parents are innocent that THEY ARE. We're not all maladjusted, lying paranoids you know.

You can claim that we're all talking rubbish and that social workers on the whole are a great bunch doing a great job; sadly from all I can gather, based on my own experiences and those of a multitude of other people who I've spoken to since, it just isn't true. The entire system is horribly dangerous and there is no realistic chance of any meaningful kind of recompense (barely even a private apology, never mind a public one) when social workers wrongly destroy reputations and break up good families.

 

[Charlieboy28]

its all good you know, i think perhaps we are beginning to appreciate just how complex the job is.

the horrible thing is that given the choice the vast majority of children would choose to remain with an abusive parent.

nobody wants social services involvement, all resent it, how do we tell the liars from the truthful ones. Baby peters mother was an intelligent articulate, manipulative highly plausible and devious woman, on the surface she was apparently doing everything asked of her, to SW faces she made all the noises of a caring concerned mother. When that door closed she instantly changed. she smeared chocolate on a peters face to cover the brusies. I mean how crazy is that. Its a job where you can take nothing at face value, unfortunately people do not tell the truth to SWs.

 

[greenstiles]

Going in always thinking there must be something going on behind the scenes must catch up with you in the end. I'm guessing over a period of time you learn to mistrust everyone and that is where the false accusations start.

It's a shame when the many cases of physical abuse that in hind sight were so obvious, that the sevices involved still didn't act...............resulting in the child deaths we hear about that could have been avoided.

Again I heard SW on the course saying ' i'd rather not get involved' if if get to serious in case they end up accountable........why are they in that job then if they are afraid or unsure to exercise the powers that thay have been trained to use. Bad trainning ?

One of the SW was convinced that all drug users abuse children sexually ! Where's the training man !

 

[Charlieboy28]

Going in always thinking there must be something going on behind the scenes must catch up with you in the end. I'm guessing over a period of time you learn to mistrust everyone and that is where the false accusations start.

It's a shame when the many cases of physical abuse that in hind sight were so obvious, that the sevices involved still didn't act...............resulting in the child deaths we hear about that could have been avoided.

Again I heard SW on the course saying ' i'd rather not get involved' if if get to serious in case thay end up accountable........why are they in that job then if they are afraid or unsure to exercise the powers that thay have. Bad trainning ?

One of the SW was convinced that all drug users abuse children sexually ! Where's the training man !

far more children are killed by the parents of families not known to social services every year than those who are.

your right i believe nothing that is told to me if all of the other evidence is pointing the other way. i take nothing at face value , there are many many layers that need to be peeled back and understood first.

your right too that we are responsible for the lives of vulnerable children, fail to act a child dies or is severely damaged for life, or make a risk averse judgement that results in a child being removed fromn a family unnecessarily. Damned if you do damned if you dont as has already been said. That though is the nature of the job.

before a child is removed you have to satisfy a judge that there is no other means to protect a child other than removal. the judge makes the decision not SWs, its like blaming the police for you conviction really

there is a higher incidence of all forms of abuse which occurs within families with substance misuse problems, again fact, but the Sw you refer to wasnt listening during his substance misuse training it seems.

kids known to social services will always die or be damaged, its a sad fact, but they will be killed by their parents and carers and not SWs

 

[greenstiles]

Good now that were past the usual defence and attack stage of criticism I'm begining to respect that you have a hard job to do, and as you say, damed if you do and damed if you don't.

So I've offered you some respect, so how about coming across the bridge a little and recognise that there are an element of social workers that have the wrong attitude to the job and perhaps 'are' looking for some closure to their own past wrongly by helping others instead of sorting them selves out 1st.

I can imagine like a lot of people who go learn Psychology are on a search for some personal answers, the same might be true for social workers wanting to help and show compassion, fix things, would you agree ?