As you will have guessed from the title of this article on our favourite Community Care website, we are promised a piece about looking into the reasons why families and individuals are aggressive towards social workers. What we get is something very different. It is, instead and rather ironically, a hostile defense of social workers and a complete denial of any responsibility in situations where aggression manifests itself in social care scenarios. It’s like reading an emotionally under-developed adult’s back-chat. And it has no place in serious social work.
What ensues is a rather myopic and at times painfully ignorant analysis by Dr Siobhan Laird from the Centre for Social Work at Nottingham University, of what is actually going on, on the ground. Dr Laird’s lack of perception about the human condition too is apparent, and makes for concerning reading – time and again, people who are entrusted with teaching the next generation how to care for the vulnerable, seem to have too limited an understanding of just why and how humans react the way they do. A basic requirement, we feel, in this line of work.
The first moment we realised this article was going to be disappointing, was, in fact, upon reading the first paragraph, which says:
” An analysis of serious case reviews reveals that some parents and their partners engage in a wide range of intimidating behaviours, including making a formal complaint against the social worker, accusing the practitioner of being racist or homophobic, alleging that they are being victimised, inviting supporters hostile to children’s services to attend meetings and expressing disproportionate anger towards social workers over minor matters.”
Since when did making a complaint about a social worker amount to intimidation? It is well within every parent’s right to complain if they feel they have not been treated respectfully and ‘with care’. And if the complaint is unfounded, surely social workers can move on and accept that this must be a reaction to the fear, sometimes, of losing one’s child. In our experience, having assisted hundreds of families at this stage, unwarranted complaints are few and far between, and if a family does complain about their treatment at the hands of social workers, they are often penalised, at best through ritual humiliation and dishonest reporting of events, and at worst, threatened with full care orders – not because the child has been deemed at that stage to be in need of such an order: purely, out of spite.
And so Dr Laird’s reaction to what appears to be an analysis done presumably at the university of Nottingham on the topic of aggression in social work (or perhaps it was the survey on the Community Care website, a rather basic tool for analysis in itself), is rather telling. Riddled with the defensive culture now so much a part of social work, which is wholly understandable given failings involving children like Baby Peter and Victoria Climbié to name just two, Dr Laird clearly has a one-dimensional view of what is going on and why. Bearing that in mind, such a defensive outlook is bound to skew the reality of what is really happening.
Families who accuse social workers of being racist or homophobic, of victimising them and inviting people to come to meetings to support the families by and large do so with a view to protecting themselves, precisely because the culture of self-preservation and defensiveness amongst social workers is now completely out of control. It is never appropriate for professionals to blame vulnerable parents, or children for that matter, when they react under pressure, and to then penalise them, which is not in their remit, instead of focusing on what’s best for the children, regardless of what parents do, short of physical violence. That is tantamount to a doctor performing an operation on a patient and suggesting, when the operation goes wrong, that the patient was somehow to blame. And then suing the patient.
We simply cannot have that kind of stupidity inside the system; it causes all kinds of irregularities. One such anomaly can be seen in McKenzie Friend support: we will always advise families not to make any kind of formal complaint about their social workers during the life of their case, because we know from professional experience that to do so means they will, most of the time, simply lose their children without any real adjudication of the facts which might merit such action. That is the other side of the coin, the side Dr Laird either does not acknowledge, or, as a full-time academic, simply has no experience of.
And whilst aggression towards social workers is not always justified, it must be understood and managed, for the sake of the social workers, as well as the families. Dr Laird seems to agree on this point, but it appears to be with a view to protecting the social worker, rather than understanding the source and supporting families, too.
Much of the so-called analysis the article mentions seems rather vague. Dr Laird tells us that, “Typically, social workers are led to believe that the expression of hostility or aggression by parents or their partners is attributable to their own mishandling of an interaction.” We would be very interested to know how Dr Laird quantifies ‘typically’. Was there a statistic involved? Did she ask several local authorities on their practice in this area? We would wager not, and it is exactly this kind of sloppy analysis that breeds stigma and mistrust amongst a sector which should be working towards showing the system that it can play a very important part in child protection. We have not, in the time we have been assisting parents, ever come across a social worker who expressed this view.
Social workers do not deal in the removal of furniture. They are trained to protect children and remove them from harm. Most parents, regardless of their capacity to care for their children, love their children very much. Any care order removing a child is bound to cause huge distress. Dr Laird’s seemingly numb attitude to this fact is no small part of a much larger problem when it comes to working out how to support families in this dilemma.
Do have a read of the article in full over tea and a digestive if you have time. There’s lots up for discussion.
ARE THESE PEOPLE FOR REAL? Do they really expect parents to give up the children they love without hating and despising those who remove them? Most of the thousand odd parents who phone me during the year have no criminal records but are being punished for not conforming to some kind of social worker norm ! Have these academics and “professionals” not noticed that even the mildest and sweetest animals turn aggressive and sometimes positively ferocious if they believe their young are being threatened?Do these characters really expect a mother who has carried her baby 9 long months to give up that baby at birth (because for example she once had a violent partner )and see it depart for adoption by strangers with a cheerful wave and a sweet smile? Social workers make a living splitting up couples and taking their children when they should be supporting and helping to reunite families as per statute.No wonder they are fast becoming the most hated and reviled professionals in the UK;and boy HOW do they deserve it !
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We as people should go and remove them Social Workers children just for the taste them own shit…There must be the death penalty for wrongful/retaliation removals…
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Dear Wanda, this article may interest you. https://researchingreform.net/2013/03/18/alice-through-the-looking-glass-when-social-workers-step-into-the-system/
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I wish to be specific. When posting I ALWAYS mean CHILDRENS social services. So has anybody considered that most of the Childrens ss workers must have attended the same University of INHUMANITY.
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Oh! FA, you have summed it up in a nutshell! I thought it was supposed to be the parents lacking in insight! Isn’t that what parents get accused of?
Natasha, when the boot is on the other foot, so to speak, how they squeal! “The parents’ reaction, one of anger at being investigated (the local authority were well within their rights to do so based upon a letter they received), hostility and defiance is a natural reaction to being poorly treated, whatever the circumstances”. Note the words, “a natural reaction to being poorly treated”. “Poorly treated” So it’s OK for them to feel affronted but not the parents? What do they expect when they take children from their parents? Are they really so detached from the process?!! I’m only surprised they are not seriously injured or even killed!
The British are, as a nation, much more passive and since they believe that they will never see their children again if they upset the social workers, I’m really surprised that 80% of social workers say they had experienced a verbal or physical attack during the previous year. Me thinks a few porkies are being told to add a few days off in sick leave, to add to 12 days off a year through illness, with one in 10 social workers calling in sick at least 20 times! Social workers are taking “shocking” levels of sick leave – far higher than the national average – prompting protests they are being subjected to intolerable pressure.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/shocking-sickness-rates-in-social-work-1787970.html
They would do well to read Conflict Theory and the Conflict in Northern Ireland.
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/conflict/cunningham.htm#human
This section just about sums it up and can be seen in parallel terms to assist with social workers insight!
“The egoism of victimisation, as Mack defines it is: “the incapacity of an ethno-national group, as a direct result of its own historical traumas, to empathise with the suffering of another group.” Therefore, victimised groups do not see beyond their own pain and anguish. These groups do not take responsibility for victims created by their own actions. This is a very important concept, particularly because it enables a terrorised victim to become a terrorist, with little guilt about committing violence. This concept is important for understanding the conflict in Northern Ireland, as well as the Middle East. After a group has been wronged, it feels no compunction about committing violence against other groups. An example of this would be ‘Bloody Friday’ in Northern Ireland. On 21 July 1972, the IRA set off 26 car bombs in Belfast, killing 11 and wounding 130 people. This was carried out after secret talks between the IRA and London collapsed, and it was justified as reprisals for ‘Bloody Sunday’, in which 14 unarmed civilians (Catholics) were killed by British troops in Derry on 30 January 1972. The IRA used an atrocity on their community to justify their atrocities. It is not difficult to see how violence escalates and spirals out of control. The egoism of victimisation also goes a long way towards explaining hard line Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. The Holocaust is often used to rationalise policies, particularly when the perceived survival of the state is under threat.
Human Needs Theory (HNT) was developed in the 1970s and 1980s as a generic or holistic theory of human behaviour. It is based on the hypothesis that humans have basic needs that have to be met in order to maintain stable societies. If Social services keep taking children from their homes, families will reach out and garner support from others and rise up to rebel against what is happening now. The question on everyone’s lips is when? People can only take so much before they snap! Vive la Revolution!
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I lost my kids for my reaction to losing them not anything I did wrong…
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We’re sorry to hear that. Apologies for withholding your name on site; this has been done for legal reasons.
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They had my kids cos the babysitter left them on their own. I was told to accept a police caution and only afterwards did I realise I didn’t have too. My social worker has turned everything on it’s head. Surely we’re all heading for the same outcome. I have 2 older children that have finished/starting degrees. I can’t be that bad
Anyone know how to learn telepathy so I know next time the kids are home alone please let me know!!!!
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I cannot understand how someone as supposedly learned as Dr Laird can ask such a stupid question ! Surely even he can see that the real question is not why parents who see their their babies snatched at birth for “risk” of abuse are hostile to social workers but rather why has noone so far killed one or two? That to me is the real mystery…………..
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Regarding the case in Coventry. The Child’s social workers have been shown to be unfit as acting in the “child’s best interest”. .Logic then informs me that because of “future emotional harm” they would be incapable of bringing up their own children. I do think that Coventry children’s social services should check out those involved and investigate them and take their children into care.
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One reason is the social workers are highly aggressive to parents verbally and by phone. Which I have witnessed and told them if they don’t stop I will be speaking to the cabinet member by phone that evening. They then fabricate allegations in reports.
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Thanks for your comment, Dick. Yes, social workers are often far too reactionary. It’s inexcusable for the most part, they should be aware that their job requires them to be civil at all times.
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