I rather want to hug Yorksha and similar. It's such a shame you're leaving.
Parents are desperate, the culture is not one of respect or engagement, it's become one where no one is listening. With wait lists of 2 years and up, and considering parents have to be really worried to get a referral in the first place... By the time anyone sees them (if they do even see the parent or child), they aren't newbies at the start of their journey. To treat them as anything less than the experts and advocates they are. Parents are a source of insight, a wealth of tried and failed strategies, a text book of what works and what doesn't. Clearly they are not the final solution otherwise they wouldn't be begging to get their child seen by CAMBS. But to have their own skills and experience shut down, belittled, discarded, especially when they are an essential part of the solution for that child, it doesn't make sense and it certainly doesn't help anyone. A good professional will help the parents in order to help the child. But as services are stripped bare and parents will have experienced an awful lot of substandard care which they'd had to fight through for their child... They come to appointments with all that history. With all those institutionalised barriers, battles and yes, too many professionals who failed their child.
Its incredibly hard to create positive and respectful engagements when each side is drained and battered.
I suspect the professionals on here are among the good ones. But they're standing up for a dying service in which good, caring, competent professionals are the exception, not the norm.
This is the issue at the heart of the problem. When services are being run down into the ground, this is exactly what happens. Over worked professionals propping up a system designed to fail.
Stage 1: front line staff cover the gapeing holes.
Slowly giving more and more to do the job they know needs doing. Slowly giving too much and the workload never gets better, the cases never get cleared... The children don't get helped. As I think York said earlier the unacceptable choice of 'which one of these children is less likely to try and kill themselves tonight'.
Stage 2: something's gotta give
The ones that care can't do it anymore. They can't watch the car crash unfolding. They can't stand the pummeling they get when they do their best and still families are failed. They can't take another angry parent and desperately poorly child. They can't keep on standing for something that is shit.
Stage 3: skeleton manning a ghost ship
The people that are left are those you've given up. Or given in. Or who can't quite give it up though it's gone way past being fulfilling or caring but sometimes they get that flash of pride in helping... Less and less though. And the others, well, compassion fatigue accounts for a lot of the stories on here. That and the people that never cared in the first place. Because they're the only ones who can stick it.
The system is rotten and failing. There will be good people left. But they are the exceptions not the rule.
The main thing I've noticed about failing institutions, is the lack of respect. It's catching, and it lets in the very very bad stuff. Disrespect from the management to all staff, disrespect amongst front line staff, disrespect for parents, disrespect from parents, and in that whole mix of unpleasantness, the kids really don't get a look in. It's all about excuses, passing the buck, blame and working the system. No one gives a shit about each other (or at least, they can't show it).
To revive it, there has to be an all out war on disrespect and incompetence. Not finding a low level sacrificial lamb when the media demands blood., but a strong and enduring belief that people are good, people deserve respect, and people are appreciated. From the top down.
God I wish that turn around would happen. Sadly, we're in 'run it into the ground' territory and no sign of hope yet.