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Social Workers and Child Protection

Started by jobotic, December 04, 2021, 12:55:41 PM

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Johnny Foreigner

Well, nowt of course, but it is not necessary for me to think those things. It is what I deem just.

'If I deem something just, it is just.' (Max Stirner)

And my reasons emanate from weighing good against bad. All things considered, protecting children has more benefits than protecting potential abusers, as children generally tend to outlive their parents.

Paul Calf

It's a Daily Mail Island view of socialisation: just make laws! That'll stop people doing it!

How do you enforce it?

kngen

Quote from: Catalogue of ills on December 04, 2021, 06:53:55 PMRegarding the judges, that isn't quite right. It's family court judges who make the decision whether to grant a care order, not regular magistrates, and it's the Children Act that stipulates that where possible children should be with their birth parents, so the legal bar for obtaining a care order is high. The onus is on the local authority to make the case for removing a child from birth parents if not doing so would leave the child at risk of significant harm, and it does need to be a solid case. The rest of your post is spot on though.

At the risk of derailing the thread with technicalities, my partner confirmed that - depending on locale - the care order requests in cases that she oversaw were often heard by magistrates (although not within London, where family courts were the standard location), particularly emergency care orders that were required out of hours. The family court in some godforsaken London overspill was never likely to be open at 9pm on a Friday night, so you'd have to drag some red-faced buffer away from their Rotary Club dinner and expect some Solomon-esque wisdom from them instead. Brilliant system.

She also said I should add doctors to my list of responsible parties who somehow manage to swerve the blame when the shit hits the fan. Actually 'fucking doctors', to quote her verbatim.

kngen

Quote from: Kankurette on December 04, 2021, 02:59:42 PMI wonder how many of the same people screaming about social services letting Arthur down, on Mumsnet and Facebook and so on, are the same people who insist that a slap didn't do them harm as kids, or tell anyone who expresses concern about possible child abuse to mind their own business.

My partner would often marvel at the number of 'Justice for Baby P' posts on the Facebook pages of the families she dealt with while in CPS. Quite a stunning stew of projection and cognitive dissonance, there.

Goldentony

SHOULD TRAFFIC WARDENS BE ARMED?

Quote from: Johnny Foreigner on December 04, 2021, 06:58:21 PMIt's a case of sadism; these people clearly derived pleasure from torturing the boy. Had he lived, in all likelihood, he would have developed strong urges to kill his tormenters. It's more common than people want to believe; children are being tortured this very moment. Which begs the question: is it responsible to let anyone randomly have children in the first place, without satisfying any formal criterion beforehand?


Icehaven

Obviously it's impossible to have any kind of "licence" or suitability assessments for prospective parents, which is why it's even more important to have a properly funded, effective system in place for when inevitably some of them turn out to be useless/evil. If you can't prevent something from happening the next best thing is keeping the fallout to a minimum, but that's the lesson that apparently keeps repeatedly not being learned.

Catalogue of ills

Quote from: icehaven on December 05, 2021, 07:24:50 AMObviously it's impossible to have any kind of "licence" or suitability assessments for prospective parents, which is why it's even more important to have a properly funded, effective system in place for when inevitably some of them turn out to be useless/evil. If you can't prevent something from happening the next best thing is keeping the fallout to a minimum, but that's the lesson that apparently keeps repeatedly not being learned.

I think it's difficult to say that lessons are not learned - it's not like this happens every day. I think it's accurate to say that lessons learned are not applied consistently, and that it's very difficult to practically apply any lessons learned when there are loads of vacancies in your team and half of the social workers who are there have recently qualified and landed where the vacancies are.

In this case we don't know whether Covid - specifically the child not being in school because of Covid - had an impact. Schools are crucial because that's where children can be spoken to without the parents there to police what they say, and I've spoken to loads of social workers over the last year or so who have talked about the inevitability of missing something because of Covid.

jobotic

Quote from: Johnny Foreigner on December 05, 2021, 02:31:05 AMWell, nowt of course, but it is not necessary for me to think those things. It is what I deem just.

'If I deem something just, it is just.' (Max Stirner)

And my reasons emanate from weighing good against bad. All things considered, protecting children has more benefits than protecting potential abusers, as children generally tend to outlive their parents.

Is this for a play?

madhair60

I personally think that children being abused is bad

Buelligan

I haven't read this thread, I'm not going to, just like I never read the threads about abuse in residential care, child abuse, whatevs.  I avoid the news about those things either. 

It's not because I don't care, not at all.  It's because I find those things so, for want of a better word, triggering, I can't deal with it.  Too close to the bone.  I can't sleep at night.  It plunges me into the darkest depression.

But there's a problem with this, of course.  I'm guessing I'm not alone in this aversion.  If I'm correct, it means that there are an awful lot of people who don't rise up and demand immediate change, not because they don't care, but because they don't dare to take into their minds the stuff these abhorrent cunts, the perpetrators of abuse, do.  I don't know the answer to that.

pigamus

It sounds weird but I wish I were more upset by it. I think the last couple years have made me numb to a worrying degree

shoulders

Quote from: Twit 2 on December 04, 2021, 11:47:54 PMThe notion of parenting licences is hilariously naive. Morally, it's dubious as fuck, but on a pragmatic level alone it's cuckoo land.

Agreed.

Zetetic

I guess the most pragmatic question is - Why is Arthur's death, in particular, being scandalised right now? Who is trying to change what?

Arthur's suffering seems to have been terrible, but it is only unusual in its details. We have far more systematised and widespread systems of child abuse in the UK and no-one gives a shit about taking those seriously, so - why this case, and why now?

shoulders

Just to try and contribute something more valuable than my previous post "Agreed" , the solution, or at least the right path to take, is extremely difficult, takes generations and requires successive governments who are willing to confront the forces that perpetuate a dysfunctional society instead of what actually happens, which is successive governments comprised of those exact forces.

We can look around at other countries and ask very searching questions about what we need to do but it starts by reforming democracy. You are talking about the very basic beginnings, the building blocks that make society function. Positive safe environments for children, each generation of parents less scarred and better equipped, surrounded by similar people who reinforce positive behaviours. New affordable housing, youth and care facilities, etc, all the things that were on offer to us in 2017 and 2019 that society rejected because it is too sick itself to even recognise what will help it.

That isn't an easy or quick fix but it is the only thing that will work. Focusing on individual cases, while tragic, is more likely to get people to lean towards draconian ill-thought through kneejerk ideas. Any time you hear a law with a name stuck in front of it, worry.

Retinend

Quote from: Zetetic on December 05, 2021, 10:20:04 AMWe have far more systematised and widespread systems of child abuse in the UK and no-one gives a shit about taking those seriously, so - why this case, and why now?

Which systems of child abuse do you mean?

Zetetic


Butchers Blind

The only reasonable response is to stop all people having children for at least 10 years. Let them get the idea out of their system.

mothman

Quote from: Zetetic on December 05, 2021, 10:20:04 AMI guess the most pragmatic question is - Why is Arthur's death, in particular, being scandalised right now? Who is trying to change what?

Arthur's suffering seems to have been terrible, but it is only unusual in its details. We have far more systematised and widespread systems of child abuse in the UK and no-one gives a shit about taking those seriously, so - why this case, and why now?
The simple easy answer to that is, the NHS. They want it gone. And since the NHS answers to the Department of Health, which many people conflate, and that's now the Department of Health and Social Care, it suits them to have public confidence in these sorts of institutions shaken, to garner support for the "root and branch" reforms they'll inevitably propose.

Maybe they'll, I don't know, propose that child welfare gets moved more into the NHS, become the responsibility of health visitors, thereby further overloading a straining system.

Zetetic

Quote from: shoulders on December 05, 2021, 10:27:20 AMFocusing on individual cases, while tragic, is more likely to get people to lean towards draconian ill-thought through kneejerk ideas. Any time you hear a law with a name stuck in front of it, worry.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but I think the longer history is more mixed then maybe we'd imagine based on the last three decades - Scandal, social policy and social welfare (2005) is an interesting book, even if it's missing the last 15 years or so now.

touchingcloth

My dad's career was in child protection for the NHS (which is related to but distinct from social services), and it seems chronically underfunded and understaffed. Ever since he retired he has been working as a locum for various health trusts who have a shortage of staff in that area, which has sometimes been due to parental leave but which more often has been covering for people on stress-related leaves of absence.

Armed Traffic Warden


Gurke and Hare

Quote from: Paul Calf on December 05, 2021, 04:23:14 AMIt's a Daily Mail Island view of socialisation: just make laws! That'll stop people doing it!

How do you enforce it?

Compulsory sterilisation for those who are assessed as unsuitable parents.

It's not what I want, but I'd like anyone advocating for such a system to own the full consequences of it.

Wonderful Butternut

Johnny, unless someone has a track record of committing abuse, or killing animals or something, then you're going to have nothing to go on for your child license. Just because someone was abused as a child, kicked out of their home and had a kid of their own at 15 or 16, doesn't mean they'll mistreat their own children. Just because someone came from a nice white upper middle class background where they were loved by their parents and never wanted for anything, doesn't mean they can't be an abuser.

Now whilst a small number of cases will be open and shut where someone is blatantly unfit to have a goldfish, much less a child, most of them will come down to grey area judgment calls by individual Social Workers and doctors. Even with the best of intentions, humans, no matter how well trained, are not infallible (Baby P attended a GP's practice with a broken back which escaped diagnosis) and you can damn certain that socio economic background and race would end being influencers. And how do you enforce it anyway? If someone without a child license becomes pregnant, she'll be forced to have an abortion (ie. eugenics)? Or the child will be taken away as soon as it's born? Yeah, that there's never been a problem anywhere.

Use your fucking brain, will you?



I don't have direct experience of Child Protection because the Health Services handle it, but I do have plenty of interaction with Social Workers and homeless services. All Social Workers I've met bar one, were either mad before they went into the job, or became mad doing it. I think it's a job that you can do for 10 years max, before you either let your clients' issues drive you crazy or you stop giving a fuck as a coping mechanism. And I don't really have a solution to that. The only thing I can think of on the fly is that each Whole Time Equivalent Social Worker is actually 2 or 3 staff members so they can job-share or in some other way rotate in and out of actively dealing with cases all the time, so their brain doesn't get fried by it. But that'd probably cause issues with continuity of care and such. And also costs money that bastards centre-right politicians won't put into it.

There's also the homeless charity we work with who treat their project workers like crap and can't retain any good ones for more than 5 minutes as a result. That helps.

Kankurette

Quote from: kngen on December 05, 2021, 05:06:54 AMMy partner would often marvel at the number of 'Justice for Baby P' posts on the Facebook pages of the families she dealt with while in CPS. Quite a stunning stew of projection and cognitive dissonance, there.
And a leading QAnon activist got done for murdering his own baby. The lack of self-awareness is incredible.

earl_sleek

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on December 05, 2021, 12:40:37 PMThere's also the homeless charity we work with who treat their project workers like crap and can't retain any good ones for more than 5 minutes as a result. That helps.

The one named after a saint, by any chance?

Retinend

This story and its implications are doing my head in and making me depressed. I keep coming back to the fact that sadistic and abusive parents exist, they will always exist and they will always be able to evade detection. They aren't of one race, religion, or income bracket. They aren't so stupid as to reveal their evil inclinations in public. They are manipulative and slippery by nature. There are no solutions. If you encourage people to "be vigilant" you'll end up with mob justice. If you encourage social workers to "be vigilant" you will there too get unacceptable false positives. If you trust the authorities accountability will be absent, because they are the only judges of their own accountability.

Kankurette

Quote from: Retinend on December 05, 2021, 03:17:06 PMThis story and its implications are doing my head in and making me depressed. I keep coming back to the fact that sadistic and abusive parents exist, they will always exist and they will always be able to evade detection. They aren't of one race, religion, or income bracket. They aren't so stupid as to reveal their evil inclinations in public. They are manipulative and slippery by nature. There are no solutions. If you encourage people to "be vigilant" you'll end up with mob justice. If you encourage social workers to "be vigilant" you will there too get unacceptable false positives. If you trust the authorities accountability will be absent, because they are the only judges of their own accountability.
Me too. Evil will always exist, no matter how draconian the laws are. Countries with the death penalty still have crimes.

Apparently the hairdresser who did Tustin's hair knew Arthur was being abused but didn't speak out because she was worried about being fined for hairdressing during lockdown. Yes, I know it's easy for me to say this but even if you're at risk of being fined, how can you keep silent about child abuse going on in front of you?

Wonderful Butternut

Quote from: earl_sleek on December 05, 2021, 02:33:17 PMThe one named after a saint, by any chance?

No, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's replicated across the sector.

Fambo Number Mive

I disagree with licences to have children (which sounds like James Bond is about to settle down and have kids), but I do wonder if some people are aware of how difficult and stressful being a parent really is. I don't have kids myself (and never will) so it's hard for me to comment too much, but I don't know if the BBC should make a documentary following new parents showing how exhausting it really is. Sometimes I walk past parents telling children they are going to slap them/punch them if they don't behave, and I do wonder how happy some of these people really are being parents.

To me being a parent seems like one of the hardest, most expensive, most tiring and most stressful things someone can do.

jamiefairlie

Those people who can't handle children without violence also can't handle life. Some people never grow up and learn to deal with stress in a healthy way, letting it turn to anger and violence.