To think social workers need much better protection when they visit threatening families?

[Jane379]

After the recent terrible case of Preston Davey, I noticed some posts on threads here mentioning the danger social workers are often in when they DO try and report things. Threats from the families, outright intimidating behaviour when they do visit etc

Police etc have weapons. Social workers are mainly women so more physically vulnerable,,and they can't carry weapons of course. Naively I assumed they were protected from aggressive clients, but it seems there's shockingly little protection.

AIBU to think social workers visiting agesssive families need something like a bodyguard? More protection than they currently get, anyway. Few jobs require people to visit potentially aggressive and dangerous homes with such minimal protection. With the amount of cases, the danger, etc , it's no wonder it's hard to recruit social workers.

If there were more male social workers- and more generally- maybe they could help on challenging visits? I expect aggressive clients would be more reluctant to intimidate if men were present.

They do sometimes but it isn’t very frequent.

YANBU

Often when there has been domestic violence in the home between the partner and the children the abuser is ordered by the court to stay away from the children, however these women in many cases go back to their abuser therefore putting their children directly in harms way over and over again.

Social workers, often young women, are sent into these home to do an unannounced visit to check if the offender is living at the property with the children and document it. How this hasn’t resulted in a serious incident on a social worker already is baffling, or at least it hasn’t been reported.

@Jane379 My husband is a SW - it's definitely not the case that he is never threatened when carrying out home visits because he's a man.
If the client is known to have a "history" so to speak, visits will be done with another colleague.
I do agree there should be more male social workers (he is the only other man in his large office) but the pay is rubbish for a start.

I think SW’s do an incredibly hard, criminally underpaid job in often challenging conditions.

Thankyou to those who do.

I'm not saying social workers are never threatened or even assaulted but it's genuinely pretty rare. We do go on visits jointly when there are safety concerns. On rare occasions we visit with police. The male social workers are occasionally expected to be a 'presence' but less for physical protection and more that some men will be less disrespectful to a man than a woman.

It would be better if the children they were supposedly keeping safe, didn’t have over 7 different SW in a year.
When people report families SW didn’t believe the parents lies, resorting in children having knives put to their throats by their drug addict parents. They need to actually do early intervention, rather than kids being abused for years. None are able to actually make decisions, local ones have said it’s ok for 2 year olds to get their own breakfasts, 5 year olds are fine to look after their 2 year old siblings. The whole system needs a big shake up, threshold levels are for too high.

Maybe a good start would be SWs wearing body cams to visits in the same way that police do. Protection for everyone involved.

@Skybluepinky Not all social workers are Childrens' social workers. Some work with adults.

Men would likely be attacked more. Being a women in SW is a protection.

But then the social workers would have to be truthful and there would be proof of what some social workers do and say that atagonises some parents and reports would then need to be more truthful... Body cams will never happen just like cameras in contact centres will never happen either.

Try being a Probation Officer, where you visit houses where you know exactly what the residents are capable of.

I was threatened numerous times and after 8 years is exactly why I left the profession. It was often the houses you didn't expect it to happen in, so planning dual visits didn't help.

It’s a totally thankless job and I feel sorry for child protection social workers. You never hear about all of the thousands of children’s lives that have been saved or changed for the good, only the fairly rare terrible cases. Huge caseloads, burnout and trauma from hearing the most horrific things day in day out. Who would really want to do this job for £35K??

Because domestic abusers are usually expert charmers and would be on their best behaviour when’s social worker visited

social workers in my LA are recording visits now (audio not video) as long as the parents agree. So I’m not sure it will ‘never happen’, probably video is the next step.

The child abusers have no legal right to be in the property. The social workers are there to catch them out unannounced so it can be used to further the case against then, why on earth would the violent man then be on their best behaviour?

Back when I did this, we were told to visit in twos if something happened. I'm never quite sure what protection that was actually supposed to offer. I'm fortunate that I've never been physically injured, but I've been held hostage - locked in a property, threats and not allowed to leave - three times. Two out of three were with people with convictions for physical or sexual harm. What frustrates me looking back is I didn't even get a debrief, or a 'are you ok' from a manager when those things happened, it got lost amongst the crisis response for the children.

I remember as a student going to a home where the adult was believed to have have a psychotic break and were known to have weapons including crossbows in the home. The police did attend with us - they hid round the corner to 'avoid escalating the situation' and we went to the door on our own!

They are not rare the cases we are hearing about though.
Child abuse cases and murder are still happening even though they said lessons will be learnt every time.
Most of the cases we here are where outsiders concerns were not listened too. Children who presented at hospital with injuries weren't flagged up..
Social Workers too willing to.believe Parents. Once is too many for these innocent children. Must do better.

Why not put yourself forward to train then?

Because they are. Or they hide. It's really not common to be threatened by a domestic abuser who is in the house when he shouldn't be. I'm talking from experience. I'm not saying it never happens but it's genuinely rare. Threatening professionals is a line most men won't cross, they want to be left alone to do what they want, not bring more trouble to their doors.

Are you a social worker? I'm guessing not. And yet you know how we should be improving at our jobs? 🤔

The social worker in my friend’s situation has lied time and time again in her assessments- they’re riddled with errors, inconsistent, biased and despite complaint after complaint, the social worker knows she’s untouchable. They need to be recorded during visits for EVERYONE’S protection. I know my friend isn’t the only one to have done through this as there’s a FB SW Survivor’s group with similar stories.

Glad you are still noticing things OP. You know ...comments, threads etc. Can you link to them? Must have been a lot to make an impression.

I agree it's rare, but it depends on the individual. Canny ones know not to do things that will bring more trouble to the door, but that's not everyone. Especially if there's other factors involved, eg poor mental health, ADHD, LD/brain injury etc, things that can lead to someone being more impulsive.

I’m amazed you don’t hear of SW attacks. My cousin is a CP SW, she gets a lot of verbal abuse. Fat bitch, fat cow slurs etc, but no physical attacks…. Yet.