Are you scared of Social Workers?

[JugsyMalone]

I watched something on TV last night about social workers. I thought they were perfectly reasonable people trying to do a hard job. However, there was this nagging voice in my head saying "if they saw the house right now...." Laundry overflowing (far too much school uniform, a one use towel habit in the house and the dog's muddy paws in winter), mucky carpet (dog/winter/hoover needs replaced), we are all messy people and the toilet seat is broken, again. I desperately need to redecorate.

We sometimes have takeaways or good M&S ready meals and I smoke fags now and then in the garden. Sometimes I get pissed on a Friday with my mates. Sometimes their kids and mine are upstairs playing on xbox and eating chocolate and pizza whilst we get pissed and do kaeroke (sp?) dowstairs. I also hate getting up early on the weekend and let the kids watch (slightly) over age films, with me.

I have had 2 contacts with SWs ever, one to get DS2 into a special nursery (years ago). They were really kind and nice. Another (even more years ago) to get help with points to get a council house due to poor living conditions in a horrible flat, again really helpful.

But an unscheduled visit? OMG - have done laundry and kitchen and hoovering after watching TV.

I know IABU but wondered if anyone else felt this way?

It is no mystery why fewer people go into SW and why quality of applicants is declining. I can think of no other profession which is repeatedly subject to such attack, both on paper and in person. No one with any sense would want to qualify as a social worker now.

As with politicians, I sometimes wonder if we get the SW we deserve.

I can appreciate it must be beyond frustrating and horrible to have someone poking their nose into your business when YOU know there is no problem.

But what happens when SW don't poke their noses in? We will have yet another Kyra, baby P, Victoria Climbie, etc, etc. Parents do claim that child is sleeping, you can't go in the bedroom, o thats not a bruise thats chocolate.

I would far rather a few pissed off middle class parents who had to answer some intrusive questions about their parenting than a child who died after being tied up in a bin bag and left in a freezing cold bathroom.

RIP Victoria Climbie. It was a direct result of the report into her murder that social workers were told they had to be more sceptical of parents excuses and to investigate home conditions, not be fobbed off.

I'm scared witless of them.

When I was pregnant with DD I was very depressed and a well meaning doctor referred me to SS for "support". She told them I was under a great deal of stress and having a difficult pregnancy and that they should not make an unannounced visit but should work with the midwife to introduce themselves - result they made unannounced visit and were so critical and unpleasant I ended up hysterical. they then wrote a report in which they said I was mentally unstable and because I'd been abused as a child I was likely to abuse my unborn child and moved to child protection proceedings

My first baby was still born and a particularly unpleasant SW told me "if this one doesn't die we'll be there with an order to take it away just as soon as the cord is cut" She went on to explain there were plenty of people who would happily adopt a new born baby. A week later they came back and asked to see what preparations I'd made for baby which at the time (268weeks) was nearly nothing then added bits to the report saying I clearly didn't care about baby.

They made me see a psychiatrist who wrote a lovely report saying the major cause of distress in my life was social services and other circumstances sorrounding my obstetric history.

Once I was removed from their offices by ambulance because they distressed me so much with their threats. I had to spend 3 nights in hospital because the doctors were worried about impact on me and baby

After all that the other professionals had a massive row with them at the CP meeting and my DD was not put on the register. Even then they tried to open up a different type of assessment which i found afterwards to be against their procedures.

In my experience social services are power crazed, highly unpleasant liars. Their idea of support is to knock a person's esteem and frighten them so much that they have some basis for their fabrications. I would not let a SW spit on me if I was on fire. There may be some good ones but i sure as hell did not meet them

I know that sounded very angry but that's how I still feel 6 years down the line. I'll never forgive them for their so called "support".

i was 28 weeks pg by the way not 268

soandso, this is exactly why I took issue. Of course I have no problem letting them in and answering all the ridiculous questions, I trusted them to be asking relevant stuff, even if it didn't seem relevant. But after that, and meeting a healthy, well adjusted child, with backup references from HV, nursery and GP, they wanted to do 3 further visits (only 2 happened before the boss called them off) during which they picked and criticised at everything. I hadn't opened my junk mail, a room DS never goes in was untidy, the bathroom "smelled a bit damp". They bandied around words like "neglect" and assumed from the outset that I was "not coping". On 2 occasions mention was made of the police inspecting the house, but when challenged they couldn't explain why this might ever happen.
If I had been vulnerable, inexperienced, not coping well, or not had the support of DH and friends telling me they were talking bullshit and I was a great mother, I might have started to believe them.

charlotteperkins That is a ridiculous comment. Why should all social workers be parents? I mean, I'm not a parent and I know what constitutes normal parenting and abuse FGS. Even non social workers can work that out! Developmental milestones are being covered in great depth in my course now. It is one seventh of the course (give or take, I can't remember exactly off the top of my head).

charlotteperkins Missed this bit.....
There was no interview as part of the selection process- if there had been then several wouldn't have got through. As it is once you are on a sw course you are almost guaranteed a cp job at the end, as there are such shortages.

Utter crap! It is a GSCC requirement. No approved course will allow applicants on without english (and sometimes maths) tests and an interview (and sometimes a group interview too). 25% of NQSWers are unemployed after a year. It is near on impossible to get work in a safeguarding team without previous experience.

I really need to bow out because I'm taking it personally. Some of the ignorance is making me very sad. Like I said, there are some shite social workers (as there are in every job) but to cast aspersions on us all and our reasons for it? I am obviously not talking about people here who have had dealings with those terrible SWers and suffering for it.

Social Workers and Probabtion Workers are, in my opinion like fire. To be treated with a degree of caution and never left unattended in your home. They can be incredibly helpful and supportive, but they can also be terribly destructive and wreak havoc, devastating families and family homes.

My experience.. I come from a very middle class family, my much younger brother (who had significant additional needs) was placed into care voluntarily by my trusting recently divorced LP mum who was persuaded by the SW she asked for help (in that she approached them not the other way around) that many services currently inaccesible would be opened up to him once in care to address some of his more severe needs. He's dead now - as a pretty direct consequence of SW involvement. Social services and later the probation services refused to listen, believing themselves infalliable and to be 'the experts'. More training, support and even more training is needed for many along with a lot less arrogance.

i agree with you crash, it is sad to read how people view us, but i think another poster hit the nail on the head society needs to decide what they want, i can not guess the issues, i can not take anything at face value and i can not just believe people when they tell me things. some of the stories that people have told are heart breaking especially when it comes to children being diagnosed later with medical conditions that would have explained what looked like abuse, but if a dr said to me that an injury was not accidental how am i supposed to turn around and say 'i like this family and i don't think that they would do that', and even if i did i would be taken off the case and sent for training and someone would do the investigation. I think that families are extremely complex and that sometimes it is really hard to understand all the different issues when you are an outsider. The phrase is social work is 'you can only do what you can do' as no one worker that create services that aren't there, spend money that isn't there and read peoples minds. and for what it's worth when i made any mistake i held my hand up and appologised for it, i would never remove a child to cover my on arse and i would think that anyone who would is beyond contempt.

My social worker was pretty clueless re child development. She raised concerns that DS2 could only read and write short words, despite the fact that he was only 4, and was still at pre-school. Many of his peers couldn't read/write more than their own name, so he was actually advanced. Luckily the HT of the school backed me up, and SW dropped the issue.

Crashdoll, your English seems quite reasonable so I am sure you performed well in the tests. Sadly though I have seen abysmal English from social workers which makes me wonder where the standard is set. In my previous job I saw a lot of files and also one summer I had a temping job in a typing pool where we typed a lot of reports for SWs. I have seen / had to correct English as basic as:

• Referring to the child as it rather than he or she - eg. I observed it sat on a floor with a full nappy.
• not knowing difference between their and there
• X comed out to go to foster care with only a little bag because her parents didn't cared
• They had no frends because they where smelly (I changed this one "sadly X has no friends and it appears her poor personal hygiene may be a factor in this")
• I didn't go in the house because the dog and the dad were bad (changed to : Unfortunately the aggressive behavior displayed by Xs father and also the threat of the dog attacking me meant I did not feel it safe to enter the house on this occasion

" Those are just examples. In short the women in the typing pool spent a lot of their time restructuring poorly written reports and comments because we were embarrassed to send them back as they'd been written. However that was some years ago, perhaps the standard of English has now improved?

ineed i often asked questions about child development as although the theory is taught it is hard to know the ins and outs until you have a child yourself, i hope i never came across as 'raising concerns' and then 'dropping the issue' when i was put right, even though it was a question and not what i thought, but this thread is really making me question how people see the questions that i asked.

sorry way too many 'questions', it's important that i prove the previous point i guess!

Thank goodness I don't rely on Mumsnetters to validate how I do my job. Like other SW's on here have commented that are some really good SW's and some really shitty ones. Not much different to many other professions.

SW is not an easy job. It is bloody hard work and stressful and the reality is that you know that if yuo fuck up it is going to be a major deal. You also know that a large chunk of your time is going to be doing things that the people you are working with don't like. That's how it is, but it doesn't make you a bad social worker.

As for the people qualifying. I agree that many SWs qualify too young, but the failure rate/drop-out rate on my course was massive. Those who can't cope got weeded out pretty quickly.

Anyway. I had better go back to work. Things to do you see.

good on you friends i'm on extended mat leave so i am just questioning everything while dd sleeps

Social Services was involved with my family for a year or two as a result of my ex's problems. The first social worker we had wasn't brilliant and made a couple of mistakes but once they got a better appreciation of the situation they got a lot better. The main social worker we ended up with was very good but with a very heavy caseload. As a result there were times when she couldn't devote as much attention to us as I sometimes felt was needed.

Having my DCs on the Child Protection Register was very intrusive, with frequent visits and meetings and it was also very disruptive for my DCs. And the stress was huge, but that wasn't just because of Social Services. The situation that led to them being involved in the first place was monstrously stressful in itself.

On the whole though I was left with the impression that they were doing a bloody difficult job in very difficult circumstances and with not enough support or manpower to do everything they really should be doing. But despite all that, they took what was a god-awful mess of a situation and left us with a better structure for managing my ex and her issues, left me with a better idea of how I should prioritise things and my children with a much more stable home life. Pretty good going, really.

When I had my first two dc, I was paranoid about any professional people. The custody case between himself and my mother was very nasty. All sorts of things were used against her such as my brothers stammer and bed wetting. She was negligent and the house was untidy but reading over the case notes quite a few things seemed very unfair. I was really paranoid that I would be like her and her mother before her. It was totally irrational and another 2dc on I don't think that way at all now. If an sw turned up at my door I wouldn't be afraid at all.

paper she told me she was concerned and would be following that concern up.

soandso My SW also seems to struggle with English,both written and spoken, (or maybe is even worse at typing than me!) At one point my son was referred to as she (I assume this was a typo) but his name was consistently spelt wrong, I was always correcting it!

However, despite my experiences, I believe there are some great SW out there, and it is not a job I would want to do, I commend anyone who does! I know I couldn't do it. I believe that SW are doing an invaluable job, often with people who will (understandably) put up barriers, and hate them. SS, for the most part helped me and my children. I do believe they made some mistakes/errors of judgement, but ultimately the outcome was positive!

thanks indeed that makes me feel a bit less paranoid! i am pleased that the outcome was positive.

i know it is not a good excuse but reports often have to be written very quickly, and proof reading, at least in the first year seems to use time that i did not have and although that does not excuse some of the issues discussed i am afraid that i have been guilty of a 'he' instead of 'she' and spelling a name wrong, only did it once though as understandably it does not give people confidence that you are on top of things.

:) paper the case was closed today by SS, but I have to work with the local CAT team for 6 weeks. I haven't stopped smiling all morning :)

My only contact with a social worker doing her job was when she carried out an assessment of my very elderly gran, who had dementia, and who wrongly claimed I was stealing from her.
The social worker wrote it up as fact in a report littered with other factual inaccuracies e.g which city my gran's next of kin, my uncle lived in.
As the report was seen by people i'n the nursing home, it was defamatory...but the social worker and her boss just couldn't see this. It also breached data protection in that it contained wrongful information. I didn't dispute my gran had said this, but that it was framed as fact (they accepted it was wrong, but had still kept the accusations in the report without also saying it had no foundation).

Anyway, I complained to my MP. Social worker and her boss swiftly came to my office for a meeting...she left in tears and the report was amended.

The other SW I encountered was dd's friend's mother. One child of hers on drugs, the other came to us for a day and ended up staying the night because her mother, the SW, was drunk and uncontactable.

Needless to say I don't have a high impression of them, but neither do they frighten me.

I fully accept that the 'she' may have been a typo, but repeatedly spelling my sons name with the female version didn't inspire confidence!

that's great indeed, they always make you do some work with someone after a case is closed, i think we like to think we'll be missed .

Social workers are not going to take your kids away because your house is messy, they drink Coke, stay up late, are dressed in charity shop clothes, etc, etc. They are not stupid. They are looking for children who are being neglected or abused and know the difference between this and loving families whose house is a tip.

However I think a genuine problem is that if occasionally they make the wrong call and decide a child is being abused, it becomes almost impossible to get them to retract that. They will fight tooth and nail against you ever getting your kids back. In some situations it would almost be easier to say 'Yes, actually I admit that I was abusing them, but I am trying to stop. Please can I see them again.' then to force them to admit that they got it wrong. This is a kind of institutional thing whereby they back each other up IMO. A little like the police - most police don't commit perjury, assault detainees, or fabricate evidence, but many of them participate in a wall of silence protecting the ones that do.

As some commenters here and on other threads have pointed out, sometimes middle-class parents who are abusive know how to go to court and convince people that it has all been a terrible misunderstanding, their children made things up, etc. So I can understand why SWs are so wary. It still doesn't make it right though.

Crashdoll- you are obviously in England, I was referring to the system in Scotland. No interview and friends were told 95% of the class would be front line cp workers within 6 months of graduating. No child development in training.