Aibu to expect people to help themselves in their own lives?

[Lazymazy1]

Have wanted to be a social worker for many years, have a degree and was looking to do a MSc.
However, doing voluntary work with a family who are in a very chaotic position, who won't help themselves, ie getting pregnant again whilst effectively homeless. Not taking control of things which will make a big difference in their current situation.

It isn't a case of can't, but won't help themselves, perhaps ingrained.

Am I being unreasonable ? Or are there good reasons why people just won't help themselves?

user. There were other people who played a part though, the most important of whom was the amazing foster mother. My point is that all these services need to be more intergrated in order to get more positive outcomes. There seems to be dissonance amongst them and poor communication. If women's aid, alcohol & drug services, mental health providers and SS are all on the same page, then there are bound to be more 'success stories'. At the moment, the links between them are fragile.

But op you seem to lack a basic understanding here of human behaviour . Have you already done the degree does it not cover any basic psychology ??

You just sound exasperated probably quite understandably to most however this attitude will not help anyone including yourself and your own sanity if you were to end up in this job!!

But OP, your role would be to offer and link to services which may be able to help your clients. If they repeatedly refuse to engage, then you take the case to a superior.

My degree was in psychology ! With a good result😊
I naively thought people couldn't help themselves . Not won't.

I agree Jess services could be better but there is a group of people who cannot or will not engage to help themselves and vast amounts of resources are spent on what is a fruitless task.

Jess, you sound like you have come A LONG way :) well done. That really isn't easy AT ALL x

I've had a mixture of social workers too. I'm not sure why I've been told its not about children with disabilities you are going to come across all sorts of children with all sorts of problems op and all sorts of families.

Fwiw I'm not cut out to be a social worker or teacher either.

I'd probably feel the same way as you OP, and wonder why on earth they were continuing to procreate, which is why I wouldn't be an adept social worker (or a GP, or a tax credits helpline person etc - the jobs whereby you need to leave your preconceptions at home). However, I'm glad that there are people out there who want to do those jobs and who are competent. I imagine that the "highs" when things go well must feel fantastic.

So OP you only want to help the 'deserving poor', people who think and behave in a way you approve of.

Ever studied any history?

I will speak to my supervisor , I just wanted to clarify in my mind what I felt. I wanted to understand why people won't, notcan't do things for themselves. Because they don't care?

I haven't changed my stance on my op.

And those people slating sw, should have a word with themselves. They do care when the people who should care don't.

YAB-a bit-U. In your position, I would probably feel equally exasperated, but for that reason I would struggle to do that kind of work. I salve my social conscience by giving to charities instead.

Interestingly 'the rule of optimism' which is on display by many posters on this thread, has been cited in many serious case reviews as being a contributory factor to the eventual outcome (often a child death in SCRs). There is definitely an institutional bias in social work where there is a view that everyone can change if enough support is given, this is patently untrue and needs to be tackled. Having a few more social workers like the OP would be no bad thing.

I think one of the issues is if social workers were realistic about the level of impact they really have on the most challenging families, they would just give up and go home as so much of the work is fruitless as Jess pointed out in her post about children being returned from care.

" They do care when the people who should care don't. "

you see that statement demonstrates that despite this you still have zero understanding.
Most people that need social services intervention are far from 'not caring' but they are in difficult life situations.
Besides with the SW that I dealt with , I certainly didnt get the impression that they 'cared' more that they were interested in box ticking and keeping their jobs.
Sorry to good SW out there.

I think it's interesting to see the perspectives of those who have had SS intervention, I wonder how their version and their SWs version of events would tally up.

I am not sure that service users are always the best judges of what the best outcomes are , particularly when it comes to child protection.

Yanbu, it's also one of the reasons why I got out of SW.

Some people wanted everything handed to them in a plate and not out any effort in at all even when the support they gotnwas the maximum support given, that some cases would love to have but couldn't due to circumstances or budginting constraints.

In saying that I'm currently in a whole new field however dealing with similar types of mentality, some people just don't want to put the effort into anything and want everything done for them with no input or effort from themselves.

Ah ok then surely you must see that for some it's almost not even an active choice to behave or not behave the way they do ??

I get it I do the sheer frustration of looking at a situation and thinking if you just did X and y life would be so much better but some people for whatever reason just can't manage this and you can't view it from your own viewpoint of what you would do because you are not them !!

As a social worker you will deal with people with drug and alcohol addictions , mental health issues , people who had abusive and chaotic childhoods who have never been shown how to live a "normal" life , people with learning difficulties . The list goes on !!

Your opening post is contradictory if people could just help themselfs there would be no need to have someone try help them ?!

owl. Have you considered counselling? I really loved that course but just wasn't quite ready.

Counselling training, I mean!

Makes perfect sense to me user

More honest debates which is missing currently in society covering many areas, I feel would bring positive change.

You sweep it under the carpet and there will be no change. Generations continue in the same vein , bringing potentially hardship and misery.
Its quite obvious that I couldn't ask the question 'why didn't you make that phonecall' which could have greater implications in not doing so. But no, there are invisible reasons, so we shouldn't ask. Let them just carry on whilst everyone picks up the pieces.

Ps I've changed some details for dp

Counselling other people? I've had plenty for myself :o
I've been asked to do some art workshops for clients at mind. Maybe I should consider it further :) I dud a couple but I kept worrying about the health and safety aspect (for them not me)

Those adults that are making poor choices now were once kids themselves, and I bet an awful lot of them were kids that nobody cared about.

You've written them off already, the last thing they need is more judgement and a social worker who thinks they're idiots.

me I was trying to understand won't is different to can't. Or is the point that all service users can't? Is that the point I'm missing?

Why don't people "do things for themselves"? They were never taught the skills, they are stuck in a chaotic cycle, they haven't really received the right help to learn new skills and break the cycle, they don't have informal support, they don't have emotiomal support, they were neglected or abused as children and this has dsmaged them to a significant degree, they are scared of change and losing what keeps them safe and calm even if it's chaotic, they don't know how to parent and haven't been given the skills to learn, they are just not able to be parents, they have an underlying but perhaps not obvious or easily diagnosed learning difficulty and/or mental health condition, they are addicted to drugs/food/alcohol/sex/whatever and cannot see any way out, they've never lived a "conventional" life and they struggle to adapt, culture differences, limited education, low emotional intelligence and so many more but I'm tired after a long day of work.

OP, you really need to be able to understand the reasons for behaviour and it doesn't mean condoning it. If you can't see these and they're alien to you, then you need to take a step back and reconsider if this is the job for you.

owl. Yes, for other people! Honestly, I did a basic Introduction to Counselling Skills course and it was really illuminating.

Honestly I'm really surprised you have a degree in psychology and yet can't understand a 'wont' for one person is a 'can't' for another.

Life experiences, learned behaviour, plus all the possible pathologies that can make people think differently all contribute to people having different ideas of what's logical.

Even just a parenting class, lots of reasons why somebody might not want to attend, the most obvious being embarrassment, fear of being stigmatised, scared of facing the realisation that what they think is good parenting maybe isn't, preconceived ideas that they'll be dictated to or have their lives analysed and picked to pieces in front of others, and as has already been said, thinking 'well that's how I was raised I genuinely don't see anything wrong in that'.

Not saying that does happen at parenting classes, but some people might think that.

That's also just one example. We do all judge internally but the trick I'd guess for a social worker is being able to set that aside, consider what is needed to achieve the desired outcome

I don't think criticism, judgmental comments or 'you should be doing x y z' approaches are helpful because people

A get that probably from loads of other people in their lives

B it just makes them feel like failures and therefore incapable of change/improvement.

C worst case scenario they get pissed off and take it out on someone else! Perhaps the very child you're trying to protect.

It's an incredibly tough job, not just on this but in having to make incredibly difficult decisions with no knowledge that it's the right decision, criticism from the general public, press, politicians, other agencies...

I don't think it's for you, not just because of your approach, which training and possibly some counselling could maybe help with but I think it would make you incredibly stressed.

The scenario you're describing is an extremely mild one in terms of the kind of situations you're likely to have to deal with - hard drug addiction, child abuse of all kinds, severe mental illness...

How would you deal eg with a family who had a child with a serious illness who were refusing a treatment for the child on religious or ethical grounds? Returning a child to a previously abusive family? A child who is being abusive?

My parents had friends who were foster carers, they had cared for children in all the situations in that last paragraph.

Not a job I could do, living with having made a decision to leave a child with a family who then ends up dead? Removing a child from a family thinking it was the right decision and that child then descends into addiction, homelessness etc?

Awful decisions to have to make.

Understandable why social work is one of the professions with high rates of anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide.

I applaud anyone who does it but equally hope they would go into it with a compassionate heart and a strong mind.

I am going to try to answer the OP.

When I was a child one of the punch-lines to the fights was "oh look at eye level, look what you've done to her again"!

This was not helpful.

It was not what I needed.

What I wanted was for the sand to stop shifting under my feet. And failing that, someone to be a point of stability and explain things.

I did not need anyone to criticise or judge my parents.

The most useful people were the ones who gave me a glimpse of other ways of being, and the very best somehow got my parents into a more positive place.

you, apparently, think that waltzing in and saying "what about eye level" was all that was needed but honestly I think any effect would have been very temporary.