Chilling story about child (allegedly) wrongly taken into care.

[Callisto]

It is from the Mail I'm afraid, but there are quotes from the couples MP which seems to add weight to the story.

Article here.

Peachy I believe your intentions are pure, nobody would sign up to be a SW with the sole purpose of causing harm but something happens during training that seems to suck the goodness out and replace it with something sinister.
My friend recommended a child be removed because the baby wasn't making enough eye contact with her newborn, frankly I shit myself when I heard that and gradually withdrew from our circle of friends, can you imagine how we all felt knowing that and knowing she was watching us too.
If you do become a SW I wish you luck and I hope you do rage against the machine and achieve all you set out to do.

*baby's mother wasn't making the eye contact sorry.
And I don't know if she got her wish and the baby was removed but I prayed every night for that family.

Well I don't think you have any place in social work until you can doubt your intentions.

Good intentions, particularly where there is a refusal to question them, can lead to some pretty horrific outcomes.

Sometimes your intentions will be misguided or tainted by personal malice or preference. Sometimes you will think you are doing the best FOR the kids but you will be wrong.

"anyone who is willing to swear at me in front of my kids is outside my remit of worry."

What if you meet a "client" (stupid word in the circumstances) when you're with your children and they swear at you?

What will you think of people who swear in front of their own children? What if they don't mind that their 3 year old uses the word "fuck"?

In some places swearing is not seen as such a big deal. It certainly isn't something that puts someone beyond the pale where I come from.

Being that rigidly judgmental about the words a person uses seems odd to me in someone who supposedly wants to help people.

Wella ple thank you, as I have said I have worked in the field and survived intact. Fortunaltey I do know whats its l;ike to be on the other side- as I said I have two autistic kids so hopefully have a degree of empathy (FFS to eye contact thing- for a start eye contact is not a sign of asd or attachemnt disorders as an absolute, it is simply one of many symptoms)

My experience tells me that the issue is ofetn burnout, I hope I would have the sense to get out if that happened.

Ultimately we need some form of SW. It's a sahme that they are viewed as baddies by so many becayuse tehre is no alternative but for them to exist, would that it was otherwise

Ski well then ew will disagree and contuinue to do so

Luckily, that should not harm either of us.

Oh when I meant swearing I did mean in the aimed at me aggressively scenario I mentioned earlier with somene calling me abitch for wanting to train

Really wouldn't worry me otherwise- note my language on thread for proof!!!!!!!!

Perhaps verbally assault would be a better phrase?

Unless your good intentions lead you to decide my child should be removed from my care because and you refuse to ever consider whether you were wrong.

You can do great harm as a social worker.

If you are 100% sure that your intentions will always be good, then you are certain to.

Thats not the same thing is it Ski?

Good intentions mean (to me) doing whatever I can to do the best for my clients

How is refusing to consider I am wrong ever that? Surely it is completely the opposite?

The best intentions mean constantly checking my actions, reflecting, getting other inout, checking again, asking myself at every stage if what I am doing is the right thing

It is completely different from a dogmatic belief in my own judgement. In fact in many wyas it is the opposite- it is about knowing I am less than perfect, expecting mistakes and checking for any evidence constantly.

That, to me, is best intentions.

(cients is simply pphrase have been taught to use in previous job, can't see how it hurts anyone TBH. )

Well ok, fair enough

just different understandings of phrases, downside of talkboards sometimes

No, it's not just you. My brother is a care worker and that's the word that he's been told you use. It just does my head in a bit - like calling passengers on a train or patients in a clinic "customers". Personal gripe, just ignore.

I stepped away from this thread last night as I found some of the comments quite offensive and I'm not sure what strange fascination drew me back. Anyway, I just wanted to applaud Peachy for her sheer niceness and reasonableness and if she is like this in real life, then I think that she has the makings of a great social worker.

In relation to 'client', I think it is far preferable to any other term, with the notions of respect and advocacy that it conveys, but I would be interested in what people think is preferable other than 'people I work with'...

I have found it hard reading the upset that people have experienced and their fear of social workers and I have to remember that these stories are very real to people, despite my opposite experience. However, having said that, I think it's really not alright to complain about an abusive experience and then dish it out to all around. Your pain is not reason to inflict it on others and respect is called for here, however we feel about people's views.

Skidoodle, my personal gripe is 'Service Users' - as if most people just turned up and decided which service, out of thousands they wanted to use...utter rubbish!

Oh that is worse. Which service should I use today? How lucky that the choice agenda gives me options! Shall I have some occupational therapy or have my benefit claims investigated?

Peachy, I'm glad you are reconsidering and wish you all the best - you always sound like a sensible woman and I'm sure you'd be an asset to the profession.

Social workers, like doctors and police officers, have an awful lot of power - depending on the role, they can section someone under the Mental Health Act, or remove their children etc. etc. Strikes me that doctors are much more accountable for their actions, though.

I have to disagree, Social workers do not have power on their own. Even for someone to be 'sectioned' the AMPH (not always a Social Worker) needs 2 section 12 doctors (one in an emergency) to agree that there is a need for assessment/ treatment. If the doctors do not see a need, then the AMPH cannot 'section'.

Also, Social Workers cannot remove a child without court order (as has been written about on here), so in that respect the decision to remove a child id made by a judge or magistrates, not by an individual Social Worker.

Social Workers are entirely accountable for their actions and can be deregisteerd and therefore not allowed to practice.

Don't disagree with how nice Peachy sounds, she may acquire a fan club!

Dr Dale said: 'Jenny had suffered significant harm as a result of being removed from her parents, and was likely to suffer fears of abandonment by them for some time to come and would be particularly at risk during adolescence."

this applies to any child removed from their family even if there is abuse and neglect.
Alot of children who are removed are returned to their parents care or the care of relatives it is these stories that are never made public and rightly so

Edam only teh police or the court can remove children social workers can only do so (should only do so) if ordered by the court

Do you know how easy it is to get a court order? Because it is frighteningly easy.

do you know how much work is done to make getting a court order appear easy

sorry that reads back really sharply, I agree there should be more balances and a better informed family court system

Kat, in response to this: "I have never seen SS try to remove a child without serious, serious concerns, and after a lot of effort to get the parents to change first." You are incredibly lucky. I remember one of the first little girls my nan had, she was taken from her parents and split up from her brothers and sisters because of an alleged complaint of neglect. She was moved between foster homes for months as SS attempted to 'make sense' (the SW admitted that she was constantly pestering them to revise the case but they refused to listen to her) of the complaints made against the family. The girls SW was as distraught as the girl as she had met the parents (obviously) and they were lovely people.

It turns out that they had the wrong bloody family and had taken the wrong kids. One of the children from further down the hall ended up in hospital after the mother abused them and that child went straight back to that mother without much SS intervention. The suffereing of that little girl could have been prevented if SS had made sure they knew what they were doing before blindly starting to investigate the wrong family.

I know of plenty of other kids who have been wrongfully taken from their parents for various reasons whilst there are other kids being neglected and abused right under the local SS's eyes. Some SW's are awesome people, but most just don't care where I'm from, and the ones who do care are overridden by higher ups who think they know better yet have never met the families they are splitting up.

Again, you seem to be one of the lucky SS workers with a decent SS in your area. I will not fault those SW's who do a great job; I will fault their bosses in the SS who don't listen to them. They are the ones in the field, seeing the families and doing the work, most of them know what they are doing.

Kat - further down the thread, I made the point that some SS depts are fabulous and efficient while some are mis-managed to a horrific degree. This suggests to me that it is not necessarily the "system" that is flawed but the people working within it. Would you agree?

If that is the case, why is more not done to retrain and/or discipline those people who do not work within the bounds of either the law, or their own professional guidelines? It seems to me that SW's have little to no culpability (if that's the right word, it's very early and I am very ill) for their actions.

Sorry youre not well UD

From a different perspective- that of the disabled childrens service user- thre main issue seems to be money. Everything comes back to it. Despite having requested respite (mainly for when I was in labour- I actually delivered with the boys in the house, luckily was problem free) we've beenr efused it.

It seems to be a best guess; they took references from school etc and made the decision absed on a form that repeatedly states I am intelligent and capable.

Flattering, but any woman no matter how so would still be exhausted after 9 years of asd surey!

I do not doubt the service woulod have been there for me if I ahd been a concern to them, they (rightly) deduced that I was not going to let the kids down and that teh problems would be mine (what they didnt pick up was DH's deopression but despite him being in the room holding ds1 on his kneee they even failed to pick up his presence and put not sure if father present on the form PMS:)

SW's are going to be more liable to making errors if they're not boxed into making judgement calls allthe time thatc an't be based 100% on knowledge- capable people snap after years of no sleep, inytelligent peopledevelop mental health isues.

SS is part of the council and are managed by them and are therefore seemingly as vulnerable to variations in competence and intent as the LEA SN departments are. There's a universal theme of cash there. I now i'm painfully single minded about thes4e things, but every time I see a new fancy themed town centre I think- blimey, there goes 37 peoples respite or special needs school places.

It's important to shout like hell at the bad cases, both LEA and SS. But equally we need to priase the good ones and maybe if we treat the council like small children who are behaving badly they might start to learn to prioritise. Money won't change eerything- it won't make the abuser stop or the schizophrenic well- but it menas enough resources might be in aplce to manage situations without removal, or to give enough help to those genuinely suffereing so that they can cope and services can focus on those who aren't interested in being good parents. AS a result of my time in HS I am a firm beleiver that most peoplewant to be good aprents and that with the right help they can be. Most though, cewrtainly not all.