But were social workers being vilified? Or was the point being made that perhaps a priority should be made in cases where reports are made and the parent is known to be in a relationship with a new partner who isn’t their child’s other parent.
Because in those instances if that parent’s judgement is off, then it’s more likely the children are going to come to harm if the step parent has sinister intentions.
In Star Hobson and Arthur’s cases those parents were shit parents. So when they moved abusers into their homes it was only a small leap to become child abusing parents,because the step parents themselves were sadist fuckers. Had those parents been decent parents those women would never have made it that far.
Let’s take a different example. I know a woman who has a daughter who she has some massive arguments with. Over the years she has called her names, shouted and screamed at her, the list is endless. It was never anything that SS would involve themselves with, but I would go so far as to say it was shit parenting on her part.
however she met a new partner and moved him in fairly rapidly. She’s lucky. Her partner is a decent human being who has taken on her child as his own. But if he hadn’t been, if he’d been an abuser in his own right, she as the mother might likely not have stopped him, and the situation could have escalated.
This is why these single parents who introduce a number of random partners to their children clearly have questionable judgement, and if they themselves have questionable standards then its not that hard to see how a situation could become an abusive one, sometimes with disasterous consequences.