After Baby P, what is life like for a social worker?

[Earthtracer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16658110

Whitewash? Or just a very incompetent/nasty set of parents that needed to be sorted out, failed to meet even basic requirements (No toothbrush!), in spite of having leeway to do so, over a period of time - and finally had their kids taken into care?

I gained the impression that there was a confrontational situation from the start and that, while the father especially was unstable, the SW's didn't help by their approach. However that may be unfair and just the way the article seemed to be. They did buy the boy a bed, after all! (But not a toothbrush!)

My take is that, in a case like this, care may be the only option. The difficulty would appear to be knowing just when to say 'enough' and put the children in care. I do think that there is a case for vasectomising men like that father though. What does everyone else think?

[Earthtracer]

I have just realised there is a 3-part series - called Protecting Our Children starting at 2100 hrs this evening:

21:00–22:00
Protecting Our Children
Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don't
1/3. A social worker tries to help a family care for their son who has learning difficulties.

[llondel]

I think the problem is that we all agree that there is a line to be drawn, that there are cases where social workers do need to intervene, but the hard part is correctly drawing that line without needing hindsight.

As with Kent County Council, where some people have written to complain and have been told "it's not your sort we're after", there is clearly an issue that prevents the resources being directed to the correct place very early on so that it doesn't waste time hounding those who, while not ticking all the necessary boxes on the form, are ticking enough that intervention would not be in the best interests of the child.

They always hide behind secrecy to protect the child's privacy, but sometimes one has to wonder whether that is actually in the child's best interest.

There's a way to go yet, they're still missing some they should have picked up, and have picked up some they should have left alone. While the latter remains true, social workers are going to find themselves suffering from a lack of trust and really need to move the line, or at least be open to review and accept that sometimes they've acted when they shouldn't have.

[Elaine Kirk]

.
Well I watched it and I saw a couple with no experience during childhood of parenting struggling to parent their own special needs child .
It leaves me with a sickening feeling in my stomach and a very big question .... where the hell has the £25.000 min per family that the taxpayer has been coughing up over the past decade or so in what the gov refer to as Early Intervention' projects run by 'charities' etc been going? not on this family obviously.
If we are paying for early intervention then why didn't this family get any?? And as for giving a bed and safety gate plus presumedly a screwdriver and hammer to the family ..... how was being penned into a room going to help this child? he needed conversation, he needed stimulating activities he needed to be ....oh *** I am gonna get more coffee

[Earthtracer]

I missed the first bit because a friend rang me but the second half gave the impression I had not missed much. Somehow it was all horribly predictable. I wanted to get the woman, who had a bit of nous but absolutely zero confidence or self-esteem, on to a weight-loss programme and some basic training to give her some useful skills. With a better-looking figure and some basic saleable skills, she would be all right, I felt. Her man, whom she thankfully got shot of, seemed pretty dopey. Would a beard trim and a great deal of dental work have boosted him? Questionable, perhaps. And had neither heard of contraception?

The SW's seemed pretty ineffectual, though their hearts were in the right place. I don't suppose there was a lot they could do - but adoption seemed pretty drastic.

The thing that really jarred were all those simply dreadful, tacky, plastic toys. The manufacturers of that rubbish should be exiled to an isolated rock, perhaps a Martello tower, along with oodles of their ghastly products and little else. It was interesting that the wee boy played mostly with the wooden ones!

With Elaine, I wonder wht happened to the money? Half of it would have been enough to do all the above and more... ECM? Bah!

[Diane]

I think they must have picked the family carefully to prove that all families 'like that' should have early intervention. It's all about selling early intervention to the masses, isn't it?

Or am I cynical?

Diane

[llondel]

I can't quite see them showing footage of the social worker getting it wrong. Social workers failing to be effective is one thing, they can blame obstructive parents for that, but wrong? No way.

[Earthtracer]

You are very cynical, Diane!

[Mayfly]

I listened to this yesterday. The more things change - the more they stay the same. Does anyone remember the landmark BBC drama about how a family in difficulty were abandoned by the state after their children were removed into care? It's 'Cathy Come Home' all over again.

Here's what the Gaurdian review wrote about this issue in 1966:

Cathy Come Home
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20...15/communities

'The welfare state says that the children cannot be properly looked after and must be taken into care. The wife says: "Give me a place to live with them and their father and they need no other care." But the whole structure gradually crumbles and ends with the children being in the most literal sense of the word "taken" into care - by force, in a railway station. The mother is left weeping on a bench and we the audience wondering if she is not perhaps going to throw herself in front of a train.'

All that is really on offer from the State is an assessment process and a court order. That's pretty much the same as 45 years ago.

The difficulty with the whole issue is that, as soon as Social Services were involved, the system obviously placed the parents in the programme under intolerable stress. That is the very worst condition under which to ask people to modify their behaviour. This was best illustrated by the assessment session in which the father was forced to be observed playing with his son. Expecting an adult to perform to some kind of assessment he obviously didn't understand appeared thoroughly unjust. He was probably more frightened and confused than anything else.

What was missing for the family was any kind or role model or contact with someone they could obviously respect and trust to help them out. Extended family, friends, neighbours or trusted family doctor were gone. Such people have been replaced, on the face of it, by softly spoken social workers armed only with rules of engagement and 'lists' of things which had to be complied with. The social workers knew their turf - but they frankly don't know how to help a family in trouble. They have an implied threat of a court order but not, apparently, much else to offer.

It's easy to have a go at social workers. But they are merely doing the states bidding - and are clearly proficient in their administration. But the outcome of this programme was dreadful and uncertain; a little boy removed forever from a mummy he loved and two parents left to fend for themselves after their lives were ripped apart by the state.

[Earthtracer]

What was missing for the family was any kind or role model or contact with someone they could obviously respect and trust to help them out. Extended family, friends, neighbours or trusted family doctor were gone. Such people have been replaced, on the face of it, by softly spoken social workers armed only with rules of engagement and 'lists' of things which had to be complied with

Spot on, Mayfly.