There is a very interesting article in Community Care today about a survey that was recently done to highlight the violence social workers sometimes face when dealing with parents and other members of the public.
Notwithstanding self defense, violence is never excusable, that much all of us know, but what is shocking about this piece is that it fails completely to understand why parents react in a hostile way in the first place. So whilst Unison and Community Care join forces to protect social workers from abuse, the real issues are being ignored and their efforts to protect their workforce will, we would modestly suggest, fail.
Because, the root cause of the hostility does not lie in any unreasonable or un-explainable phenomena. The world has not gone wild. What has happened, is that government organisations have simply lost the trust of the people. They have taken advantage of the public, whether through charging too much for terrible services or not putting enough money into services that are needed; they have forgotten they are there to assist the public, rather than to dictate. And perhaps most importantly, government culture has become all about passing the buck, so when something goes wrong, there is effectively, noone to turn to, to take responsibility.
Whether social services blame the courts for the delays inside the system or the courts blame family breakdown for the delays, all we seem to see are government bodies failing to man-up and do the right thing.
If we were head of Social Services for a day, the first thing we would do, after discovering that our workforce was being put in dangerous situations, is carry out extensive research on why: why do parents feel so angry? We have a feeling the answers would not be that hard to come by.
Take a look at some of the accounts of social workers in the article, where they explain how they came to be either verbally or physically attacked. One social worker cut a man diagnosed with HIV’s care package down. He had effectively discovered he had AIDS and then along comes a social worker who says “Sorry mate, you’re very sick but we’re going to give you less help”. The individual in question was terribly angry and threatened to hurt her physically and even to give her his AIDS virus. It was a very unpleasant reaction. And perhaps the social worker who delivered the message was compassionate, but the message from the state is still the same. The message is still, “Fuck you”.
And what of compassion? How many social workers really have the training to deal with complex emotion elegantly, and of those, once they are overworked and exhausted, how many can keep that kind of diplomatic and instinctive communication going? The answer may be, very few. Here, the training is at fault and who is going to admit that better training is needed? No one from inside the sector, unless they’re very brave.
Or, take the account of the social worker who advised a mother she could not have her travel expenses to have contact with her child because she had not attended contact for three months – we do not know the reasons why she didn’t. Perhaps the mother was ill. Or perhaps she hadn’t been the greatest mother, but she was trying very hard to be, now. The social worker, quite understandably, was upset when the mother spat in her face. That is not a nice thing to do. But there is another side to the story and no-one ever tells the side of the parents’.
We are not trying to play down the incidence of violence. One social worker lost her baby after being pushed down a flight of stairs. These things are not right, but we have to be very careful not to create a Them and Us Society, where government officials are protected and members of the public are treated automatically with suspicion and contempt.The slogan for this campaign is, rather unoriginally, “No To Violence Against Social Care Workers”. How about a tandem slogan which reads and “Yes To Dignified Care in The Community”.
These are delicate times. It will take strong people with a gentle touch to get it right. We hope very much that Unison and Community Care will do some soul-searching and not just attempt a skin deep solution for what is, at its heart, a very deep and delicate problem.
forcedadoption said:
[Content removed] When they are ordered to take newborn babies at “risk of emotional abuse” they should refuse to do so. [Content removed]
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Natasha said:
🙂 Dear Forced Adoption, I have, regretably, had to edit your comment for legal reasons. But I read your thoughts and I agree that there is a lot wrong with the industry.
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Elizabeth Moore (@ElizabethMoor31) said:
I have noticed over 40 years that the training of social workers leaves a lot to be desired.
I have seen my best friends change into the most inhuman creatures imaginable after just 6 months of training.
I can only speak from personal experience.
During training or maybe brainwashing/conditioning might be a better way of putting it, these lovely people came to believe they were “gods” with the power to do as they pleased and never be held accountable.
I have heard them with my own ears tell me of their power and their power over judges, lawyers, barristers etc.
In ireland during my childhood, there was a shoot to kill policy on social workers which I never understood at the time, but did learn and understand why in time.
I learned that during training, social workers are programmed out of all human emotions and become robots.
So with god like status and devoid of human emotions, they simply do as they please. Even disobeying court orders.
I found this below on the web, which expresses perfectly the way social workers “act” in their role
“There are a number of Social Workers in Britain who should be psychiatrically examined for Sadistic Schadenfreude Disease as a matter of considerable urgency as it does seem to be becoming highly infectious among their ranks.
This Disease affects the frontal lobe area of the brain and destroys the part which controls emotions, most effectively destroying those emotions of compassion, caring, and concern.
It seems to be being passed on during their meetings, conferences, and training Courses and is particularly rampant in certain parts of the U.K. such as Liverpool, Wigan, Essex, Suffolk, Surrey, Hampshire and some Inner London Boroughs where a highly virulent strain of the disease is apparent in those areas.
Obvious non-medical symptoms are nervous jangling of car keys, waving the two index fingers of both hands in the air in front of their faces to denote “Quotation” marks, and comments in their speech such “I hear what you’re saying” and “What I think you’re saying is….. “. When it is obvious in the other person’s speech that they are making comments such as “F*+k off you heartless twisted bitch”.
But it is their actions which give cause for most serious concern. They take gleeful delight when they see a highly distressed and distraught mother having her children removed from her (permanently) in hospital maternity wards or in Children’s Court precincts. They then go off to celebrate their `Victory for Rightfulness’ in the nearest pub, with large quantities of lentil soup, muesli, and to quaff generous quantities of Chardonnay.
This is a very serious disease and is becoming increasingly virulent and is reaching epidemic proportions and the government must urgently intervene to stop the further spread of this disease among British Social Workers. (it seems also to be spreading among doctors and nurses and other associated professionals, who may be less seriously infected but the disease is apparent in their cognitive processes.)
One of the most urgent steps for the government to take is to order every Pharmaceutical company to immediately begin research studies and tests into a vaccine which can be given widely and urgently, and with repeat booster doses at least every two years.
A Treatment Programme for Sadistic Schadenfreude Disorder must also be immediately put into effect by the Department of Health. Top Medical Experts state that Frontal Love Lobotomy is essential followed by several years of Electro-Convulsive Therapy and a Rehabilitative Programme of gradual exposure to situations of caring loving relationships between mothers and children.
It is not yet known whether the disease has an inherited component but in order to protect our society from future generations which these social workers may produce, a programme of compulsory sterilisation is essential.
A full account of this Disease (Sadistic Schadenfreude Disorder) with accompanying data from scientific studies, will be appearing shortly in the British Medical Journal.”
Dept for Infectious Disease Control
London.U.K.
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Elizabeth Moore (@ElizabethMoor31) said:
Any social worker- and I do know one- who recommends ECT for abused children to punish them for telling truth re abuse, needs jail time.
The secrecy must change to total transparancy or we end up like the church institution.
The energy of the church and SS social workers is identical- both play god, punish, create fear, and treat mothers and children especially as sub humans and in so doing dehumanise them, thus allowing themselves/gods to do as they please.
This comes from their own de-humanising process during training which they then project onto service users, whom like the church, they expect to obey, worship, not question in any way.
So Natasha, it is merely history repeating itself- them Eve ill Eve women and their children born in sin- to suffer for the sin of being born of woman. It is in our collective consciousness and needs the light of truth shone on it.
Thanks to you- this begins today.
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Natasha said:
Thank you for your thoughts and your continued interest and thank you also for your kind support.
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forcedadoption said:
Natasha,I realise why you had to edit my comment ,so I will try to express my views in a less aggressive fashion !
I have no doubt that the ss were hurt and upset when an irresponsible prankster changed the word “NO” on the poster to “YES”;Outrageous of course ,and fancy spitting at a social worker ! Perish the thought !These worthy teams of do gooders”,Where would we be without them? And quiet you at the back who said “a lot better off”
Social workers have a hard and thankless job removing newborn babies from their mothers and some say they should be applauded for their courage and devotion,others of course do not………
Damned if they do take these newborn babies at birth,for after all they might be at risk one day ! Damned again if they leave beaten up toddlers like baby P to die in misery because after all that drunken drugged up thug with the rotweilers who was baby P’s mother’s boyfriend really didn’t seem such a bad chap after all …….
Social workers must be right most of the time otherwise they would not win more than 99% of their cases in court would they?I could give you lots of details proving the wonderful caring ways they have and the impeccable and unbiased evidence they give in court except the courts are quite rightly secret to protect the privacy of the children they take, It stops impertinent and ungrateful parents from protesting too and let us all be thankful for that!
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Natasha said:
🙂
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Angry Grandparent said:
Having over 16 years of dealing with over 13 completely different social workers and also my work in the child protection reform up to 2005, I have noticed some alarming trends that instead of being caught and eradicated, become the norm and magnified.
I agree that however strongly we feel, however angry and upset we become, that violence towards any social worker not only will pretty much ensure the worst that can happen to the individual with the loss of the ear of any sympathetic judge but also that as a larger macrocosm, it affects us all.
We are fighting an incorrect image that we are abusers one and all, arrived at by a very sinister and secret machinery to that conclusion, the man on the street simply knows no better and if he were to read in the paper of such a violence that it will further entrench a viewpoint given to him by a biased media, that there is no smoke without fire, that person MUST have been unstable etc etc
I know I have been criticised especially for my comments once about a certain stunt happy fathers group which was all and good up to the point they started assaulting actual ministers and threatening to chuck them into the canal, that is where the public stop listening to our grievances and played by an adept political PR machine, the handcuffing incident really hurt every person campaigning for reform.
We have to fight the system, using the system, there is no short easy road around that, look how long it took to get the stolen children sold off to the colonies an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, years and years but by patience, careful and intelligent dialogue, slowly cornering the powers that be, that in the end, they did win and a close was able to be put on one of Britain’s most shameful incidents.
How we achieve our own success is critical, only through shining a light of truth to MP’s, union leaders, nurturing relationships with them, nurturing too relationships with journalists, we need a concerted campaign to every councillor, every representative out there, naming and shaming those that do not listen, using their tools against them by highlighting the clearest most easily digested cases and pushing them into a situation of being for or against stealing by the state.
We have so much more nowadays than 10 years ago, free websites, facebook, the ability to network is astounding, for every one of us publicly stating our anger, there are 10 people out there who have also suffered who are oblivious to our cause. It has been estimated that THOUSANDS of families have been subjected to this so where are they? Why are we so few? Divide and conquer is an old, old adage but we are divided, we are conquered and until we unite as one powerful group we are powerless.
I have not sought to restart Unity Injustice nor create another group simply as drawing off people from groups would weaken them and yet we would remain a small isolated group as well, I would rather lend myself to the movement at large than fracture further and create dissention.
One of the aspects of the colonial debacle is that every person involved was sought to be identified, every decision maker too identified whether someone at Coram Fields or a government rubber stamper, whilst the people who make decisions can remain invisible there is no risk to them and I think one of our first, most urgent tasks is to identify every fellow sufferer and to identify too every worker who made those bad decisions, every director who quashed complaints, we need facts for our movement as at the moment we appear to be a small minority, we are not.
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StuG said:
Social Workers have become the Untouchables. CAFCASS will go to the most extraordinary lengths to cover up misfeasance. The CEO of the GSCC was quietly sacked for refusing to investigate hundreds of complaints “too expensive”. Try to complain and the complaints process outlasts the court process then, according to CAFCASS, there’s no point in addressing the complaint because it won’t affect outcomes. So reasoning in the first instance does not work, convoluted complaints procedures fail at every level, the regulatory and monitoring bodies are not interested, the Police and CPS won’t press charges. The UN fully accepts that sustained injustice promotes terrorism as an inevitability.
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Angry Grandparent said:
Is not the power grabbing and turf wars also along that scenario?
10 years ago education departments were run by educators, now they are run by social workers, given complete freedom and even operate in Gestapo fashion in schools trawling the registers and detention books for trouble. A teacher in Bournemouth refused to assist a social worker and he was disciplined out of hand and nearly lost his job when it was found he dared defy one as he was asked to spy on a pupil they were interested in and he said his job was a teacher not a police officer.
Yet the failure of the complaints system is akin to that of the police, when you put police in charge of investigating the police, run by ex police and no political or public oversight and we have the current situation where the police are pretty much a law to themselves.
Complaints about social workers should not be at the local level whatsoever, local authorities seldom uphold even the mildest of complaints now let alone when they are tasked with evidence of quite serious undoing and at each level they work to shave off, to distort and reduce the original complaint and when that fails just refuse to comply. With the movement of registration from the GSCC to the HPC, I am hoping that registration complaint and enforcement will finally have some teeth, it is a small hope but we know the answer already.
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StuG said:
I have spoken to the HPC in regard to a criminal investigation of one professional. The impression i got was that the HPC themselves are a well meaning body frustrated at their lack of appropriate powers. For instance, they agreed that an expert witness producing bent reports for court should be punished rather more than a six month suspension on unsupervised work.
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sinbadking said:
if I were a gorilla and I perceived you to be a threat to my young you would respect the gorilla for his protective nature and not attack him for it. Just because the perceived threat is from a social authority it does not lessen my natural response to that threat. INNATE NATURE IS THEN IN CONFLICT WITH SOCIAL CONDITIONING ANDIS MORE BASIC AND POWERFUL.The surprise is that there is not more violent confrontations. When are social workers going to acknowledge the restraint that most parents show in the face of possibly the most extreme provocation an animal may suffer, a threat to their young.
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forcedadoption said:
We social workers fearlessly face deprived mothers every day ! Let them cry,let them threaten us with violence if they dare !We shall snatch their babies and arrange for them to be adopted by gays and lesbians whatever the cost .Emphatically, we deserve all your applause for doing this, for we are politically very correct !
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