To really think it is time we get a better understanding of what social workers actually do!?

[TalkingPoint]

I read so many posts on here saying I have been referred to social services, or someone is threatening to refer me, etc, and then these people are understandably filled with fear that their children will be removed.
I have worked with social services for over 15 years, in that time I have met good and bad social workers (as with any profession) but I have never met one who doesn't care. I have had the pleasure of working with some of the most committed, dedicated and wonderful people absolutely dedicated to positive outcomes for children. Children are only removed in extreme circumstances where no other resolution can be reached. In the following bit I am talking about families in need of extra help - not cases of extreme abuse and purposeful neglect which is a very different thing!

A referral to social services doesn't mean someone is a bad parent, it means that for some reason at that point in time they need some extra help and than can be achieved through extra support in school, play therapy, family counselling etc. Social workers deal with a multitude of issues and have access to a wide range of interventions. A parent(s) can be struggling due to a short term external influence such as divorce, a death,, illness etc, and need the help, but unwilling to ask or access help due to stigma. We need to remove the stigma attached so more people feel able to access 'early help' services and limiting risk of damage further on.

AIBU to think we demonise social workers to quickly actually they have a lot to offer to help. A person may refer another person to social services but this is most often out of love and worry and not knowing what else to do. Accepting the help of social services in times of difficulty shouldn't be seen as a sign of weakness but as one of strength, recognising that something isn't quite right and wanting to make it better?

NameChanger you have my vote.

When you look at the discussion around Social Services many people seem to hold two statements to be true even though they are at odds with each other.

1. Social Services will remove your children first, ask questions later. They will remove children on the flimsiest pretext and you will have to fight to the death to get them back.

2. Social Services ignore abuse, they don't care, "Jasmine Beckford, Victoria Climbie, Baby P, Daniel Pelka."

Which one is it? Unless you go down the conspiracy route of children being snatched by SS (in the rebranding they need to avoid that unfortunate acronym) for adoption which has been shown to be utter rubbish.

You have my vote Namechange surely the difference it would make to so many lives is worthwhile. What cost the health and happiness of so many people?

What drives me nuts is a heavy investment in health, education, social care and support could lay massive dividends in the future. But no government is willing to lay the groundwork that they will never reap the benefits from. Even so many of the liberal 'socialists' on mumsnet would balk the second that their lifestyles were curtailed in order to pay for what is needed now to create a functioning happy society. They work hard for it and deserve it you see, as opposed to the hardworking people on minimum wage who evidently don't deserve it.

Sorry, I am rather going on.

Many people on Mumsnet are, I am sure, convinced they would not be taken in by deceitful parents but some certainly have been. A good few years ago now a pregnant woman posted here under her own name about Social Service threatening to take her child away for totally spurious reasons. She received masses of support to move to another EU country. Her name was being invoked on the Italian C section case as evidence of the evilness of social workers.

Social Services, of course, could not publicise her name, but she came under investigation in the liberal country she fled to and her child was eventually removed. It was either a massive conspiracy across country borders or Social Workers were justified in their initial action.

What is a sw meant to do if a paediatrician won't definitely say if an injury is non accidental?
A sw cannot know remove a child without first completing in depth assessments for the court all the while the child is with the people that for example may have caused the injury that the dr won't confirm is non accidental.
The sw could apply for an emergency protection order from the court but in all likelihood won't get it unless there is firm evidence of new abuse.
The police are the only agency who can immediately remove children from the care of their parents, but again the risk needs to be immediate.
A lot of the time sw's are tied by the law that is meant to protect children.

But ItsAllA, those statements are not mutually incompatible.

They speak of an organisation groaning at the seams, where it's impossible to do a good job, for anyone,

Jasmine Beckford, Victoria Climbie, Baby P, Daniel Pelka
Social workers, wastes of blood and organs, every last one of them
That is all

These kind of generalisations do absolutely nothing to help to create a balanced picture.

Having read on here the accounts from the people who do social work, the statement is at best crass and dismissive, at worse a pretty vile thing to say about people who have to deal with massive challenges. Yes, cock ups have happened, which have been exposed by the media, but it should not be license to 'rubbish' a whole profession.

It's like saying "all nurses are lazy and ignorant", "all teachers just do it for the long holidays".

Actually the comment was probably deliberately designed to wind people up, so I've fallen for it! Still it shouldnt be allowed to stand, unchallenged.

Quite a few of the students I teach want to be social workers. I find it telling that a lot of the ones who do have been in care.

I think it is telling that they want to go on to 'help' others who are in the situation they were once in.

We only hear about social workers in the press when things go wrong, either a child left where (s)he shouldn't be or taken from a loving home.

In my job I always try to be respectful and recognise the fear that people feel, and empathise with it. Even if I am removing a child for very good reason, that parent is still a human being and I can still be sensitive to their pain and deal with that appropriately. I would however make two points:

1. Neglectful and abusive parents almost never admit it, either because they are covering it up, or because they lack the awareness to see what they are doing is wrong. They certainly aren't going to come on Mumsnet and say " social services said they have concerns, I think they may have a point, how can I improve my parenting?". Believing what parents tell us at face value is a feature of poor social work.
2. I'm a children's social worker- I'm not the parent's social worker. The needs of the child will always come first even if that upsets and distresses the parent.

LadyFairfax You do know that social workers work in many, many areas that aren't child protection? You do know that 'baby P' is called Peter Connelly? At least have the decency to refer to the child by his name. You do know that the professionals who failed these children were rightly disciplined and struck off? You do know that the SCR highlighted Daniel Pelka's school and the paed. as responsible as SS in his death? Are they a waste of bones and organs?

Whatever you think of child protection SWers, that was a disgusting way to speak about human beings. People like you always make these debates a joke.

I live in a county that has been deemed inadequate in its last two OFSTED inspections.
Members of my family foster so have a lot of contact with social workers.
Their own social worker is lovely and they really appreciate her help and advice. However each baby has its own social worker and so far they have had four babies, four different social workers and four different experiences.
One of the stated difficulties in the OFSTED report was over reliance on agency social workers. These people may or may not be caring and dedicated, but because they do not work in the same area all the time they often come across as clueless because they are getting used to the way it is done here, having previously been in a neighbouring county.
I often contemplate how awful it must be to have to make the decision to remove a baby from its mother at birth. We rarely know the full picture as the foster parents are only given bare facts which might be relevant to the child (eg where there is drug dependency) and where there is supervised contact the parents themselves sometimes reveal further information to the foster carer.
It is not a job I would want to do. As a previous poster said there is an inordinate amount of paper work, plenty of red tape and 'procedures' to go through and then when disaster strikes the social worker gets the blame.

I've worked with social work for two years now, I've mentioned previously on different threads about it too.

In my experience they're truly amazing. I was referred during the worst time of my life, I had a complete mental breakdown and couldn't look after myself, my house and although the children were being fed and clothed they weren't getting what they actually needed from me.

When they first got involved and came to my house I broke down completely. I agreed to allow them to go into voluntary temporary foster care and the social worker took me to the doctors and got me the help I needed.

My dc were in foster care with a lovely woman for three weeks. I was allowed to visit for two hours Monday to Friday and when my health started to stabilise and I could cope with keeping the house looking good they were able to come home again.

They heavily supported me in the first few months, referred me to a lot of different agencies that I was able to engage with until I was fully better. They offered nothing but kindness and support, and when I had my next mental breakdown April this year (due to outside factors of extreme abuse and manipulation from previous so called friends daily attempting to break in and do me serious harm, the council being unable to move me etc) the social work got me temporary accommodation, helped me get a hold of my mental health again and now that I am finally a much stronger, happier and more settled person, they're looking to close my case.

So yes, social work can be scary and in my case my dc did go into temporary foster care, but that was with my permission. They didn't snatch them, they offered me a solution that helped and worked. They were away for a short time and they were home again.

In my experience the social wworker I have now has been nothing short of amazing and without her help and support my life would still be in that dark bad place, and that's only if I hadn't killed myself first since I was so close to that when they got involved.

That's what the social work do. They help the vulnerable and defenseless, whether you're an adult or a child. They make the best difference possible to your life.

The thing I've found is that it totally depends on your area as to how good social services are.

I'm a foster carer, in an area where social services has been judged as inadequate in all areas by Ofsted in their last 2 inspections. Over the years we've had quite a few out of area placements, and when I compare the service that my out of area young people have received compared to the service that my local young people have received I can honestly say, I'm surprised that we haven't had a serious Daniel Pelka/Peter Connelly type incident here yet.

Most of the social workers I have met over the years have been lovely. Unfortunately the vast majority of them have been completely inept. Funding, case loads, staffing issues, agency workers, constant reorganisation, etc, have all lead to a service that seems to be reactive rather than proactive. We lurch from one crisis to another.

"I'm a children's social worker- I'm not the parent's social worker. The needs of the child will always come first even if that upsets and distresses the parent."

I actually think that's fair enough Wildthing. I just don't see the sense in the OP pretending that SWs are going to support and help parents, when the reality often is that they'll just bitch at parents until they can pull it together of their own volition for the few weeks it takes to get the case closed or the parents can't get it together, and in which case they have their kids taken away.

But WHY do social workers come across to so many of us as gullible and ineffective (personality-wise)? Is it that the system makes them impotent or grinds them down? Or that the low status and pay only attracts certain kinds of people?
I watched Protecting our Children (BBC documentary on Bristol Child Protection) and was open-mouthed when a social worker penned a handwritten agreement with an active drug-addict to "promise" she wouldn't use drugs when she was with her newborn baby. How can anyone be that naive as to think a drug-addict has the capacity to make sensible and reliable decisions while still in the grip of addiction? (The inevitable happened, and the social worker was signed off work with stress)

I think the system grinds them down to be honest.

Unsupportive managers, massive caseloads, the fact that everything is about££ and box ticking

I know of one social worker who went to his managers as he felt his caseload was dangerous. He was making mistakes, missing things and just lurched from one crisis to the next. He was told if he didn't like it, he knew what he could do and that he wasn't irreplaceable. He had a breakdown and has now quit.

He cared, he wanted to do his job properly, but he just couldn't cope. He wasn't missing stat visits deliberately, he just couldn't be in 2 places at once. He didn't have the time or resources to offer to struggling parents until it was too late.

Thing is, he was irreplaceable. Children's services here is massively understaffed. We have a huge shortage of social workers and have to rely on short term agency workers on 6 week contracts. My young person hasn't had a stat visit for 6 months, or even an actual, named social worker for the last 5 months It's horrifying really

I have spoken about this before on here.

I fell out with someone and they sent me a text saying 'I am reporting you to social services, I hope your kids have a nice life with their new parents'.

SS do not just remove children on the say so of some random person. They investigate the allegations made. They spoke to my HV, they spoke to my DCs schools and they spoke to me and my DP. They also spoke to my DC. They even wrote to me confirming that they were no longer interested in my children and that they viewed the allegations made by XXXX as malicious!

As a student nurse, we have safeguarding children lectures. Hideous! I hate them and find them very upsetting. We are told to refer to SS if we have suspicions. Some were saying that they would not want to be responsible for getting someones children taken away if they had done nothing wrong.

I told them about my experience and hope it would make them less hesitant.

It's funny - my father was a weekend-cover social worker (had a different full-time job) and he was and is a decisive, firm-but-fair, get-it-done sort of person. He didn't have a degree when he trained, and had grown up in fairly tough circumstances. He's the opposite of the whiny-Guardian-reading-ethic-print-wearing-stereotype of a social worker. Yes, he absolutely wanted to improve people's lives and strongly believed in the role of society in protecting the vulnerable. But he practiced a more "muscular" (is that the word?) form of social work which appears to have disappeared.

I've come across a lot of SW who work in adoption. They have all been caring people with the best interests of the children being placed first.

One of them once said to me "we want to provide a Rolls Royce service, but we only have enough money for a Mini". They are massively constrained by budgets.

They get a bad press because parents can go and say whatever they like to the newspapers, and SS have no right of reply because of confidentiality.

They also cannot waive magic wands. Social services can give support to struggling families, but they cannot be with them 24 hours a day, and they cannot give them £10,000 to sort out housing / financial problems.

Agree with a lot of what's already been said. In our county, the thresholds are so high that all SWs are working at an untenable level of stress/distress. Not enough going into early intervention/prevention imo. There need to be more resources available to families to help themselves before they hit crisis, rather than threats and punitive measures meted out by rote. A lot of the plans placed on parents by SWs are unachieveable; they've failed before the ink's even dry. This isn't me SW bashing - some are great and supportive and really want to help, but for me its about the bureaucracy involved. There's also a MASSIVE disjoint (if that's a word) between adult and child social care. Parents and children are inextricably linked - so why aren't the services supporting them joined up?

Also agree wholeheartedly with Down. There aren't enough muscular SWs. We had involvement from SS in the 70s - they were family social workers iirc who were firm but fair.