'snatched' by social workers

[DuelingFanjo]

oh ffs

I know it's the Daily Mail but Social workers don't snatch children!

She looks good for 48 mind!

Thanks for that post Spero. I don't think you are being a bully for disagreeing vehemently with JH, I was just concerned about the level of threats and abuse he was receiving earlier, but that came mainly from one poster. It is very hepful when you and other SWs open up the debate like you did in your last post. It is so hard to avoid the debate getting polarised and I would very much like it not to be.

I don't think people are 'mindless followers' of JH. From my limited experience of him here he comes across as someone genuinely trying to help, and someone who is always calm and polite - if he has made mistakes then it is entirely fair that they be pointed out, but it is always hard to know the whole story, as both sides are so polarised.

I agree with what you and Lenin say about funding.

Po, do you honestly think that believing a woman would have her children taken into care purely because their grandmother thought a social worker was fat is a balanced view?

No I didn't say it was a balanced view wannabe, I said I don't think believing what someone says who comes to you for help makes you a liar. I think good people can be flawed. Flaws come in many different characteristics - I don't know enough about the case in question, but it seems to me that JH is a good man who maybe sometimes gets it wrong and sometimes gets it right. He has behaved with extraordinary composure on this thread in the face of a great deal of insults.

I think SWs do an incredibly difficult job. But if a thread on MN can degenerate so rapidly at the mere hint of concern about the system, it makes me worry about how the system can really be improved.

I'm sorry for your bad experience starlight but have to take issue with your previous comment about being better off without social workers (the country I presume you mean?)

The problem is that the very good, preventative work that social workers do doesn't grab the headlines so the profession is solely judged on the basis of the disasters, cock ups, mistakes etc.

I'm a mental health social worker and regularly work with Children and Families social workers and have done for 12 years. I've met good ones, poor ones, indifferent ones. However I have never known children be taken into care for spurious reasons certainly not for insulting their social worker! I'm afraid thats why I find jh less than credible. If me saying that is being overly defensive then so be it-I just don't believe some of what he says.

I think some social workers are awful and I would question their motivation for doing the job. But what I really object to on threads like this are the sweeping generalisations made about 'social workers'.

I'm regularly involved in detaining people under the Mental Health Act-its always the last resort, undertaken with 2 independent doctors and I have to write a very detailed report to support the action. My point is that statutory powers are not exercised independently on the individual whims of social workers. I just don't believe that the 'system' conspires together to break up families.

I think the posters involved in CP are saying that the comments by some other posters just do not reflect their experiences and when we say this we are called 'defensive'.

I think many people here are too hung up on that "fat" comment.

The big picture is that there are a huge number of small children and babies taken away from their families in the UK, some newborns, with petty reasons such as "she had a depression as a teenager", "grandparents are not young enough", or "her DP was once investigated but not convicted for abuse 15 years ago".

Who cares whether or not a social worker's decision was once influenced by being insulted? Look at the overall picture. You people live in a place where babies are taken away from their families in large numbers, sometimes with the flimsiest of excuses. Do you realize that this is not the norm, that elsewhere in the developed world, it is extremely rare for the state to forcibly remove a child from his family?

I've come across examples, at work and amongst family and friends, of great social workers and awful ones. Great ones in mental health, as it happens, Staggers.

In mental health and child protection SWs have draconian powers - that are often necessary. But sadly some people go into the caring professions for the wrong reasons - any caring profession, not just SW. Because they enjoy wielding power over vulnerable people. Or they become jaundiced. Or stressed to the point where they can't exercise their judgment properly. Or fall victim to group think.

Then there are a lot of OK people and then some great ones. But in any field where the job really really matters, such as medicine, the bad ones need to be weeded out and their ability to harm needs to be curtailed. I am not sure that SW is accountable enough for that to happen. Otherwise why are the Rochdale SWs still working? Why were the senior people responsible for poor Victoria Climbie's death promoted while the overworked junior SW was hung out to dry? (They are not only still working, but actually in ruddy charge..)

NanaNina Fri 04-Dec-09 18:20:44

"A GP was too late in diagnosing my sister's lung cancer and she later died (though we don't know what difference an earlier diagnosis would have made) but sad as we were, we did not then go on to mount a campaign trying to destroy the credability of all GPs. "

But would it have been so unacceptable if it had been a case of your sister dying through some fault of procedure or lack of proper controls and you had then dedicated yourself to getting the situation changed so other people wouldn't have to suffer the same? I know lots of people who do dedicate their lives to improving (and hence criticising) aspects of medical care precisely because of family experiences and nobody thinks the worse of them for that. Why would this undermine your credibility? I just don't get it.

I can imagine that John Hemming may well be misguided in what he does, but I really cannot see why his motivation may not be admirable, just because it possibly has a personal cause.

The difference is that if you mounted a campaign to improve cancer diagnosis or hospital care of the elderly, nobody would squeal that you were trying to undermine the credibility of the medical profession.

We often get threads criticising midwives and obstetricians in relation to women's experiences of childbirth; yet we never get midwives trying to get those posters banned. Lots of threads laying into the education system, yet noone suggests that if your negative experience is personal, that means you can't speak. It seems criticising the medical or educational profession is allowed, but not criticising social services.

As for your own outrageous remarks about journalists- I don't see how you can retain any credibility arguing that a whole profession must be respected when you are so clearly incapable of doing this yourself.

I have only ever had one encounter with SS, having been reported by an over-zealous idiot at a charity that i went to for help. The person who reported me had never met me or my family.

Obviously once they have a report SS have to act, and they came to see me. They said that everything is fine, but still have not closed the case. They want me to go for support, taking the children, in the middle of a huge housing estate that i am not familiar with, which is renowned for beign very rough. The place I have to go to is one for people with very serious problems, and I have to do this with my children.

The SW said after she came last week that she would be in touch about whether I could have a different sort of support, and whether she was closing the case. I have not neard anything yet.

In the meantime I continue to lose weight, I am terrified there is going to be a knock at the door, I am frightened about going wandering around this estate (it has barbed wire up around some of the buildings, lots of smashed windows with plastic sheeting over, adandoned cars, you know the sort of thing). I do not feel this is a good environment to take my children into. But obviously I have no choice.

The whole experience has been the worst of my life, and the main problem with it all is that there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with our family. So why are they wasting time on us?

Edam, Starlight. I agree with much of what you say. I think in a profession which is maligned (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) and where the emphasis is becoming more geared towards meeting targets front line practice can suffer badly.

Social workers have to be registered by the General Social Care Council in order to practice.The GSCC are supposed to promote quality, professional development and who also discipline social workers transgressing the code of practice. They have taken a number of social workers off their register for malpractice and sometimes abuse of clients. The GSCC itself has been rounded criticised recently for not hearing disciplinary cases quickly enough.

Starlight, also to say my child was subject to a CP investigation after one incident of domestic violence at the end of my relationship which my child did not witness. I was devastated, angry and felt that the response of Social Services was disproportionate. They admitted this and said they were following policy not looking at my individual circumstances.
I'm no apologist for social services but think some of the vitriol expressed doesn't take into account some of the great work social workers do.

Cory, my problem with jh is that he grossly misrepresents some situations and that he is in a position of power and influence.

i agree wholeheartedly with staggerlee's post of 9.06am.

i have never come accross a child being removed for flimsy reasons, the aim is always to keep families together and, if a child is being removed from his/her parent/s then the first option explored is wider family. age does not come into it - there are many very able older people caring for their grandchildren, similarly there are many older foster carers.

like staggerlee, i have come accross quite a few bad social workers - i have never denied they are out there,just as any profession has its share of bad practitioners. however the removal of a child does not hinge on one social worker, there is a process which is prescribed by law and the flimsy reasons cited for the removal of children would get laughed out of court.

i also feel starlight makes a valid point about red tape and paperwork - i think the amount of paperwork involved is ridiculous and affects the amount of time available in which to actually do the job. each new investigation seems to bring more layers of paperwork and i feel this has become more and more of an 'arse covering' exercise in case things go wrong rather than actually improving the system. in fact, i would go as far as to say that it has made the system worse as much of social workers time nowadays is taken up with paperwork; this is certainly not what i signed up to when i did my training. i have also come accross social workers, and other professionals, who really appear to be running scared - so worried about things going wrong that they are determined to stick exactly to the policies and procedures, make sure every form is watertight and maybe sometimes the human element gets lost.

i have met practitioners who are so jaded and cynical because of their years in cp that, actually, they probably shouldn't be doing the job. but who is there to take over? very few people are going into social work these days, never mind cp sw.

Staggerlee, I have not denied that JH may be misrepresenting situations; I am quite prepared to keep an open mind on that. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Certainly, as I keep repeating, my own attitude towards SW has always been positive. Before I started reading these threads, that is.

What I am saying is that the way in which NanaNina argues her case on this, and on any other threads I have encountered her on, is enough to make me feel seriously worried about ever meeting a SW like her in RL.

Her willingness to make sweeping statements about other professions, while trying to prevent others from doing the same about hers is not reassuring.

Nor is her repeated statement that any criticism of a public organisation from members of the public is just arrogant and should not be allowed.

Everything she says suggests that she is extremely averse to the concept of public accountability. She seems to epitomise precisely those aspects of the care system that have caused such serious problems in the past, the type of attitude that I believe (hope) Social Services are now trying to get away from. Someone who thinks outside criticism equals arrogance is hardly likely to be fighting to promote change or to encourage whistleblowers, are they?

Let us not forget that a SW is also a person of some power and influence.

If I did not have personal experience of calm and balanced SWs, but had to form my opinion of them from Mumsnet, then I would be very worried at the thought of any involvement with SS.

Most of the vitriol I see on these threads come from SWs. Though to be fair, not from all the SWs who post on MN. Several of them have retained the calm matter-of-fact tone one would like to see from members of a publicly funded profession.

NanaNina pulls herself together and does this very occasionally, but then descends to a far more emotional and personal way of arguing.

You have to remember Cory that the social workers in this thread are only human and that the posters attacking them are not their clients.

If someone was attacking your profession unfairly and making sweeping generalisations then that might make you angry. Lets not forget that nn has also contributed a lot to these discussions.

To make assumptions about someones practice by the way they present on a forum is a bit odd in my opinion. Perhaps think about how you would feel if your profession (and for most social workers its more than a profession its a vocation)was consistently misrepresented,attacked and insulted.

How does that tally with the vast majority of posters saying most SWs doing a very good job in very difficult circs though?

By wahwah Fri 04-Dec-09 22:25:10

"I've always thought John believes in what he does, I think he's often misguided and a bit bonkers, but there is a sort of integrity to it, even when imho he's spouting nonsense about 'evil'.

I don't always agree with Nananina, but from my perspective I think she began posting on Mumsnet wanting to share her views, experience and considerable knowledge and the hostility she got in return was unfair. The fact the she robustly defends our profession was enough for her to be attacked (and there was one or two people talking about reporting HER to, let's not forget)."

I know MN HQ are immensely powerful and all that, but there is a world of difference between being reported to them and being reported to your party leader, as Spero has done to JohnHemming. I won't be in any way upset if you report my posts for breaching MN guidelines - I'd be gutted if you reported me to my real life boss for disagreeing with you on a chat forum.

I sometimes describe the neonatal nurse who viciously undermined me when my DD was in SCBU as evil. Maybe she is not inherently so, I hope not, but she seemed that way to me. It is not an inappropriate word in this context.

avril, I think jh doesn't just express his views on chat forums and thats to his credit.

But,by virtue of his position, he has a responsibility to be accurate and to evidence his assertions. Thats where I have a problem.

I'm not hung up on the 'fat social worker' myth but I think it does encapsulate why some posters feel so aggrieved by jh

I think you've very powerfully summed up the inherent difficulties with social work starlight. At what point do ss get involved? At what level?

Its true in my line of work that I have to very carefully weigh up the risks and rights of clients. For example, I have to consider whether putting a vulnerable mentally ill woman on a ward where she may suffer from sexual harassment or worse is preferable to her being at risk of jumping into a river.

These are the real shitty decisions that social workers face daily. Sometimes you know whatever you do (or don't do) is going to have a negative outcome because we don't have magic wands to change peoples lives for the better. But mostly we do try to make things better and thats more than most of the armchair critics do. And maybe thats why we get so heated on these threads

Question for the SWs: Has anyone known a SW to be disciplined by the GSCC?

Thing is, all these checks and balances that are supposed to be there, and that people cite as evidence that one crappy SW can't take a child into care don't always work in real life.

My sister is a learning disability nurse. She's attended case conferences where it is clear that some SWs are prejudiced against people with LDs. One where a SW was determined to bully a woman into a home for new mums because the SW wanted to discourage the father. Who was considered 'overinvolved' because he visited his partner and new baby in hospital every day. This man did not have a criminal record, there were no reasons for any concern - just prejudice.

A friend of mine is an extremely eminent doctor. He was threatened - ironically enough the SWs wanted to report him to the equivalent of his boss, much the same attitude that they are taking to JH - because he dared to point out they were leaping to conclusions about a patient of his who was accused of MSbP. He suggested they might want to look at the most likely explanation first, rather than jump straight for the least likely. If they could threaten someone of his professional expertise and reputation for daring to challenge them, what chance do ordinary parents stand?

The SWs in both these cases may be unusual, I am sure there are lots of great SWs who wouldn't dream of behaving in such a manner. But the ones I have mentioned are practising and they have the power to do very serious harm indeed to anyone unfortunate enough to be their client.

I must admit Edam, I've disagreed with psychiatrists throughout my career but I've never once threatened one. There is a very important role in professional disagreement which should be used to ensure that opinions are scrutinised and that the best interests of clients underpin all decisions.

ilove. I haven't known any personally but if you look on the GSCC website you can find lots of disciplinary hearing have taken place.

He's not a psychiatrist, Staggers - no reason why the woman should see a psychiatrist at all, no-one thought she was mentally ill. Until her child got ill and she was unfortunate enough to come up against SWs who were enthralled with what was then the latest fad, MSbP - the 'satanic abuse' of the early 21st century.

Better not say what kind of doctor he is though as I don't want to identify him.

And better say yet again that I am sure there are plenty of very very good SWs out there who are doing their level best to help vulnerable people.

Presumably there are even a few good people at the General SW Council or whatever the regulator is called. Sadly not those with any power, it seems.

That's really interesting that there is an internal disciplinary body for social workers. Am wondering whether it's effective? For instance, there is a strong independent police complaints body (PCC) where even police will refer cases themselves and an investigation can run concurrently. Seems to me the stronger an internal body is, the less people will feel the need to run to the press as their concerns will be addressed by someone in power.

I don't know how one would measure the effectiveness of how an internal body disciplines members though.

Do you mean the General Social Care Council? Afraid it's a disaster.