Predictably, the 'Guardian' wheels out a stooge (professor of social work, no less!) to try to deflect blame from the state's agents over the horrific Arthur Labinjo-Hughes case:
...it is very important that inquiries take the effects of poor resourcing and the wider impact of austerity into account when looking into how social workers interacted with Arthur.
All that's missing is a whine about 'Thatcher!'...
It wasn't resources they lacked, it was clearly common sence and a desire to put the child's needs first!
Which brings us to a final hugely influential factor: the parents and their emotional impact. It is clear that they were frighteningly strategic in their abuse of Arthur and no doubt in concealing it. It has become commonplace for inquiries into such cases to conclude that social workers and others lack “professional curiosity” and miss the obvious because they are too “optimistic”; that the “rule of optimism” results in professionals naively and hopefully believing what parents tell them, and denying what is in front of them.
Because once again, that appears to have been the case here. The photo of a whopping great bruise that social workers 'didn't see' proves that!
What did these fiendishly cunning Moriartys do, hypnotise them?
But perhaps sensing that isn't likely to fly, he switches tack effortlessly: it's because they just care too much and can't cope, you horrible right-winger press!
My years of practice and research into child protection social work suggests that far from being optimistic, when faced with such aggressive and manipulative parents, social workers’ states of mind are often closer to helplessness. They are outmanoeuvred and overcome by the suffering and sadness in the atmosphere of such homes and in the children’s lives.
Then they aren't the right people for the job, and they shouldn't be in it. If I failed a task because I was 'overcome with hopelessness' I'd be sent for retraining or fired!
Why doesn't that ever apply to these people?
Covid, social distancing and the personal risks social workers routinely had to take to see children in their homes increased the complexity still further. The more that is taken into account – along with the emotional demands and funding deficits and systemic problems that mean social workers are faced with obstacles that make their job much more difficult than it needs to be – the more can be learned from Arthur’s tragic death.
We learned all we needed to learn from Baby P, Dylan Tiffin-Brown and Evelyn-Rose Muggleton, Victoria Climbie, Daniel Pelka, Ellie Butler... the list goes on and on and on.
And it will continue to go on and on and on until social work is overhauled and this kind of incompetence is not tolerated and excused.
"Why doesn't that ever apply to these people?" Because they are the people the system is *for*. It's not a bug, it's not even a feature – it's the whole point. The deep state farms voters by recruiting mediocrities into its ranks, guaranteeing that they will *always* vote and clamour for for "more resources" for their parasitic class. In the end, those are the kind of people attracted to living on their fellow men while bossing them about. Decent people couldn't sleep at night knowing every penny they had was taken for them by state force from their productive fellows.
ReplyDeleteNo decent people enter politics any more...
DeleteThey could claim lack of resources if they hadn't managed to visit them. These did visit but didn't do their due diligence. If this was a private firm and not the government then there would be sackings at the least.
ReplyDeletethe state is failing to deliver across the board our agreement, which I didn't sign up for btw, was that we would use the law to handle disputes and not take matters into our own hands. They disarmed us and then fail to t=do their bit. From incompetence through prosecutions to sentencing they screw everything up.
And the scale of the incompetence seems to increase daily...
DeleteMy family was involved in trying to get resources from social service during Blair's Labour years and was told back then that there weren't any resources. It's not the fault of the current Government: underfunding and underperformance in the social care sector has been endemic for decades.
ReplyDeleteToo many overpaid managers back in council offices drinking tea while attending endless meetings and not giving support for social workers at the coal face.
My mother used to work with 'statemented' kids in the section of school set up for them. What she had to say about their competence would curl your hair!
DeleteJulia, I've had the misfortune to have dealings with socialist workers on many occasions over many years and I haven't a good word for them.
ReplyDeleteThe type of people who see themselves as doing this job are in my opinion completely unfit to do the job.
And because the legislation is slanted in their favour, at all times they hold all the cards.
So, as usual, when they do the job badly, they don't examine themselves, their terms of reference, their commonsense or their moral duty towards other human beings, rather they always play the victim.
I think the world would be a better place if socialist Withers didn't exist, I don't think they are capable of reform because the job will always end up being what it is now; a hive of like minded individual doing the wrong things in the wrong way, to gratify their own belief that they are doing 'good'.