Apparently Haringey Children's Services find it incredibly difficult to attract social workers to its team. I wonder why. I'm guessing that this means that in order to tackle the monstrous workload which they have the caliber of staff which they do attract is not the highest. And those who are there are overworked. Government guidelines say that no social worker should have a caseload of more than twelve chidren to deal with, whereas the overstretched staff whom Haringey have managed to keep are coping with caseloads of between eighteen and twenty. After the recent storm of criticism it will be even more difficult for them to attract staff.
Perhaps when the enquiry looks at what went wrong, they might address the profile of social workers in this country. Damned if they do take children away and damned if they don't, they perform an intensely stressful and emotional function, and the only time anyone pays them any attention is when something goes horribly, tragically, appallingly wrong. Or when a woman goes to the press with a story about how mean, vindictive, heartless social workers have ripped her innocent child from her without any justification at all. And yet there must be stories where the intervention of a social worker has made infinite difference to the lives of children and families all over the country. Have you ever heard one? No, nor have I. A girl I teach wants to be a social worker. I had to suppress my look of astonishment and dread when she said this. A more distressing and thankless job it is difficult for me to imagine. I can only guess at the stress levels which must be endemic in the profession. From the recent coverage you'd think that the social worker had joined in the beatings.
Someone who knows what he's on about said something interesting to me yesterday when I talked about a case of two children , a fifteen and a sixteen year old, who had beaten a man to death. I made some disgusted comment about them and my friend pointed out that they had probably had a brutal life, one not a million miles from that of Baby P, only they survived. You don't come out of a loving, supportive happy home and get your thrills kicking the shit out of people.
And yet we look at pictures of angelic, tortured and murdered children on one side, and police mugshots of dead-faced, hate-filled teenage thugs on the other and never consider that there might be a relation between the two. Both are damaged; both probably have known much misery. The older ones are hardened. And maybe they are hardened because they are the children of brutalised or neglected children, who themselves were dragged up by inadequate parents of their own.
It's a tough one, but at some point society has to look beyond today's awful, awful headline and see what needs to change.
Without pointing fingers at scapegoats. I object to it because it doesn't help.
Perhaps when the enquiry looks at what went wrong, they might address the profile of social workers in this country. Damned if they do take children away and damned if they don't, they perform an intensely stressful and emotional function, and the only time anyone pays them any attention is when something goes horribly, tragically, appallingly wrong. Or when a woman goes to the press with a story about how mean, vindictive, heartless social workers have ripped her innocent child from her without any justification at all. And yet there must be stories where the intervention of a social worker has made infinite difference to the lives of children and families all over the country. Have you ever heard one? No, nor have I. A girl I teach wants to be a social worker. I had to suppress my look of astonishment and dread when she said this. A more distressing and thankless job it is difficult for me to imagine. I can only guess at the stress levels which must be endemic in the profession. From the recent coverage you'd think that the social worker had joined in the beatings.
Someone who knows what he's on about said something interesting to me yesterday when I talked about a case of two children , a fifteen and a sixteen year old, who had beaten a man to death. I made some disgusted comment about them and my friend pointed out that they had probably had a brutal life, one not a million miles from that of Baby P, only they survived. You don't come out of a loving, supportive happy home and get your thrills kicking the shit out of people.
And yet we look at pictures of angelic, tortured and murdered children on one side, and police mugshots of dead-faced, hate-filled teenage thugs on the other and never consider that there might be a relation between the two. Both are damaged; both probably have known much misery. The older ones are hardened. And maybe they are hardened because they are the children of brutalised or neglected children, who themselves were dragged up by inadequate parents of their own.
It's a tough one, but at some point society has to look beyond today's awful, awful headline and see what needs to change.
Without pointing fingers at scapegoats. I object to it because it doesn't help.
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