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.

How weird you are defending social workers have you no respect for Preston Davey, Arthur Labinjo Hughes etc. The list is sadly endless.
Lots of children could have been saved if social workers stepped up, joined the dots and listened to relatives and Preston Daveys foster mothers concerns.
Nobody thought it was funny he'd had no hospital admissions until he went to.luve with those freaks. Nobody checked him over. Returned him to his foster mum . Took her concerns seriously. Just basic stuff that could have saved him.
It's just awful.
Where's the protection for these little ones?

That makes me think...would they? Men generally are more likely to be physically attacked, and I suppose an aggressive man might see a man as a threat in a way he wouldn't see a woman.

So maybe women social workers are less likely to be actually attacked? Still unpleasant to be in that kind of position though. If recording visits is happening more now as pp said,,that sounds like a good idea.

Of course I'm defending social workers, I am one. Please try to find some basic respect in the way you speak to people, your tone is unpleasant.

I would imagine the massive power imbalance that these people have the power to take your children off you (yeah yeah blah blah courts police blah, we all know whose recommendations they obey) scares the vast majority of people to stop them being violent except proper wronguns. At the flashpoint that children are leaving the property the sws tend to stand back and observe as the police do the actual dangerous part.
I think bodycams to prove the truth would be great for everyone. I reckon a lot more lessons would be learned bloody quickly when the truth can be discerned in inquests, court cases and inquiries.

Lots of children could have been saved if social workers stepped up, joined the dots and listened to relatives and Preston Daveys foster mothers concerns.

• it definitely seems at least some of the social workers failed in that case but it should be noted others also ignored warning signs. The sister & work colleague who did not report the disturbing comments made by Varley. The school where he worked who brushed off concerns. The doctor who brushed off the nurse's concerns one of the times Preston was injured.

There's also the fact that social workers are hugely overstretched. If people are handling far more cases than they should be, exhaustion and the need to fit everyone in make potentially catastrophic errors almost inevitable.

I would imagine the massive power imbalance that these people have the power to take your children off you

• I agree partly with this but it's worth noting that threshold is very high: which is at least partly why some tragedies happen, or children are simply cared for badly but SWs cannot intervene as threshold is not high enough.

We need to wait for the case review for Preston Davey before we can say for sure whether this could have been avoided.

It’s not that rare, every children and families worker I know has at least one “story” of being intimidated, threatened, followed about in the community, weapons brandished, physical assault. I’ve known people to leave the profession after being traumatised by parents.

With the advent of AI tools in social work more conversations are being recorded audibly if not on video, which is a mixed blessing in all honesty. I know many would welcome the idea of body cams which would show the levels of hostility they experience in their work.

I'm sorry, it was wrong to imply that make social workers would be much safer from threats. There needs to be better protection across the board.
Re the pay, this is really bad for such an important and stressful profession. How can it be improved? I wonder if social worker is one of the professions where status and pay went down as it's mostly women?

YANBU but whilst it is still considered okay to have paramedics working solo throughout the night (and an ever increasing number are female), nothing will change until there is a high profile murder of one of us.

Of course it could have been. It's no secret about the foster mum raising concerns about the boy she knew better than them and being ignored.
A thorough check over of Preston after he'd been to hospital 3 times under their care.
I reckon they ought to employ some ordinary mums as social workers .
I can't believe this still happened in 2023.
Nobody thought it odd 3 hospital visits and Varley giving 2 different accounts of how the baby was injured. It's just disgusting that nobody cares enough to properly investigate or listen to concerns from others.

I don't think the pay is that bad TBH. £34000-49000 in my LA. Manager is high 50s-60k.

Social work is recognised as a profession now, but it wasn't for a long time - it was as womens work, charity work. The pay is better than it used to be say thirty years ago, but its similar to nursing in terms of it being high responsibility for the pay.

Plenty of social workers are 'ordinary mums' what do you mean? You think untrained mums would be better at the job than trained ones? Ever fancied training yourself if you think you can do better?

Often there's more violence when there's a male worker, because a lot of people think it's more acceptable to hit a man. The old "don't hit girls" things still applies for some.
But both sexes are at risk, and it's really sad. Some sort of security sounds a good idea, but I suppose when going in to someone's house, you don't know when the violence could come, and maybe sw feel clients won't open up/talk as well if security is present?

Of course they won't. I wouldn't want or need 'security' at visits on a day to day basis.

In your first post you suggested the council employed illegal immigrants, and now you think they don't employ 'ordinary mums'. I think you have a very skewed idea of who social workers actually are (hint; they're mainly women, many who are family oriented so have kids or foster kids of their own)

@Lemonfrost hello fellow colleague!

I'm a social worker. I think we should be working in 2s, but there isn't even enough staff to do good quality work whilst doing single visits. Going in 2s not only helps for the safety aspect but also to protect workers and families from false allegations, reflect on practice together to figure out what's going on and how to move forward and to pull up any bad practice.
I don't agree with a bodyguard apart from in very seriously threatening situations. I think it would make the families, children especially, scared and prevent us forming good relationships to provide support.

I agree with this, but I do think there should be a better system for social workers to be able to get help if something kicks off. The only option really is 999, or the hope that someone notices you're missing and takes action, which is unlikely when in children's, most home visits are at the end of the day so there's no expectation of returning to the office.

There should be good systems for checking in and out of home visits and a clear lone working policy.

Men are typically a lot taller and stronger than women, if a man is attacked he is far more able to defend himself.

Yanbu. My dm was a social worker in the 90s and it was bad then. But if there was a particularly tricky family the police would attend with them. I doubt that happens now, their probably isn't the resources for that.
Even then she ended up in some pretty hairy situations and it was a combination of luck and her ability to de-escalate that got her out in one piece.

Have you ever had one though? Every local authority I've worked in, the 'checking in' has been letting your manager know when you're done for the day. But that's usually after 5pm, when your manager is at home, and not really in a position to do anything unless they've got concrete evidence you're in danger. And that's dependent on them paying attention and counting the numbers when they're cooking tea/running their kids to their clubs or whatever else they're doing in their own time.

My managers always made sure I was in contact if it was known to be a risky visit, but the 3 most serious times I was threatened/prevented from leaving weren't ones we predicted. Two of those it was so late I could only notify EDT who don't have any system to respond.

Wrong person I didn't suggest that never mentioned it.