[Apples]

Re above, I won't edit my above post, but please accept my apologies for the spelling mistakes. I am aware of them.

[amcneil74]

To p1ss them off, I commented

He may have been a hero in the war, but he was a coward in his death

though they haven't posted it

[Mr Mordon]

Dosn't look like it's going to get any easier for them

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sout ... 095964.stm

[davidjay]

How difficult is it to take someone home and care for them yourself? Obviously harder than complaining to the papers.

[ACG]

'Social workers took away my twins after I'd joked that birth spoilt my body'

the artical actually hints at several other reasons including malnutrition and poor hygene, but lets just ignore that...

The babies were born in December, at the height of nationwide fury that social workers had failed to step in and halt the abuse and tragic death of Baby Peter in Haringey, North London.

The alarm over Peter's death has raised the prospect that some innocent families have been caught up in the backlash.

AAAAAGH! god, i wonder what might not have helped there eh?

as per, click "worst rated" for the sensible comments

[Fozzy]

The Mail approach to these stories irritates me so much. They are invariably about white parents, and they totally take advantage of the fact that Social Services aren't allowed to say anything to give the other side of the story. The commentators are even worse because they build up this utterly ludicrous fantasy whereby social workers are stealing white babies to meet adoption targets. In this case it blatantly isn't a social services initiative since it was the hospital who called them in, and experienced medics aren't generally going to do this on a whim. Also of course no judge is going to agree to a care order or adoption without very careful exploration of the facts and strong evidence. There will also be a neutral guardian appointed to represent the interests of the child. All these people who have actually seen the evidence support the need for a care order, yet Mail readers invariably decide they know better on the basis of a brief one-sided presentation of the facts.

I posted a rant to that effect earlier today. Needless to say, it hasn't appeared.

[glasgowgril]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0r6cQnj2m" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The usual inability to employ consistent and logical thinking displayed to fine effect in the comments: if it's the underclass, send in the stormtroopers to inspect their homes and parenting skills, and if they don't pass, take the children away permanently and give them to good parents (oh yeah, and the middle class are queuing up to adopt smelly 9-yos from sink estates, are they?), forcibly sterilise the mothers (sieg heil!) and of course it goes without saying that all benefits will be stopped because They just have lots of children for the money taken from hardworking middle-class white people. If it's the middle class, OTOH, scream blue murder about nanny states and lack of personal freedoms and make up stories about SWs having secret quotas of white babies to find for adoption. It also, naturally, goes without saying that social workers are clueless, young, middle-class, graduate and female (thus quintuple whammy for anyone with Common Sense in the technical sense, ie that attributed to it by the DM) at best and evil at worst.



That said, I did like this comment - elegantly subtle, I thought:

"This woman was only copying another well known case, she saw how much money they have made on the back of their child's disappearance and thought she could cash in too but she obviously lacked the intelligence to pull it off
- Worm, UK, 17/6/2010 8:28"

[Waterstones]

You know I think Social Workers stock started to slip in the late 80's/90's in the eyes of the public during that craziness over devil worshipping,your thoughts?

[glasgowgril]

Could be - wasn't that started by an overzealous paediatrician?

But as someone who has a fair bit to do with SWs because of my disabled son, I would say that my main perception of them is that OF COURSE they vary in how competent they are - I am quite used to having to push them from the rear to get something done, which I do via what are, I hope, tactful remarks like 'would it be any use to try x or y?' or 'perhaps you could advise me about the best way to go about this' - ie this is what I would like you to do - but that I have never, repeat never, come across one who does not have the attitude that they are in the job to do the best for their clients that they can in the circumstances.

I think the problems in public perception arise because a)most people never have anything to do with SWs and believe the evil shit the tabloids feed them because they have a built-in anti-authority gene; b)SWs tend to be middle-class and informal in dress and attitude, which paradoxically older people and the less well-educated also don't like, thinking that authority should look like authority; c)SWs don't have magic wands or access to unlimited funds and can't always provide exactly what people want, and also some people don't seem to appreciate that a finite budget has to cover a lot of clients and that they can have their share but not several other people's share as well. Oh yes, and despite DM readers' constant repetition of 'responsibilities as well as rights', you try asking them to pay some of the costs of social care.

Disclaimer - I am not a SW and I have no relatives or friends who are SWs. But I think they do a difficult and often unpleasant job and don't deserve to have it made more difficult by the tabloids.

[moonkatt]

in the press social workers are damned if they do and damned if they don't. I remember a story where the mail was frothing at the mouth because they had placed some kids with an obviously evil and depraved couple, (the mail knows this because they were gay) rather than their heroin addict mother and her frail elderly grandparents. I'm sure the reaction would have been great if they had kept the kids with mummy and one of them died after drinking that fully green juice that mummy likes so much because it stops her rattling.

[Fozzy]

glasgowgril:

I have never, repeat never, come across one who does not have the attitude that they are in the job to do the best for their clients that they can in the circumstances.

I have. For example, the social workers in two local authorities who preferred to spend a fortune in legal fees disclaiming responsibility for giving a vulnerable 16 year old a bed for the night rather than just sorting out the accommodation first and leaving the argument about who should pay till later. And the Head of Social Services who spent months ignoring her own junior's warnings that the family of a seriously disabled girl were under so much stress that they were on the brink of break-up, until the entire family unit collapsed and the girl had to be taken into care.

But I suspect that this isn't the sort of social work failure that Mailites are really bothered about.

[glasgowgril]

I'm talking about SWs I have personally met, not stories in newspapers. Just to make that clear. The only ones I can personally answer for are the ones I have had to do with, but I bet that's a few more than many of the DM commenters who believe all SWs are evil have.

[moonshien]

having had two disabled* sisters we spent a lot of time in the company of SWs.

sadly they generally did prove compatiible with 'right on' stereotype and one in particular was seemingly obsessed with correcting my mother's 'unacceptable' terminology

* we werent allowed to call them disabled in the presence of the SW. the correct term varied from time to time, depending which course they'd been on.

[AOB]

having had two disabled* sisters we spent a lot of time in the company of SWs.

sadly they generally did prove compatiible with 'right on' stereotype and one in particular was seemingly obsessed with correcting my mother's 'unacceptable' terminology

* we werent allowed to call them disabled in the presence of the SW. the correct term varied from time to time, depending which course they'd been on.

There's a tv presenter called Trisha Goddard who used to (still does?) present a Jeremy Kyle/Rikki Lake type show. Over the years people noticed that whatever misfortune, illness or personal tragedy the guests had, she too claimed to have experienced it. For some reason I thought of this when I read your latest post but for the life of me I don't know why.

[Andy McDandy]

Did anyone go on saying they'd got testicular cancer and watch her squirm?

On a sort of related note, on Eastenders the other night, there was a scene with a social worker visiting a family and getting the "You're all a bunch of meddlers and do-gooders" treatment from the Mitchell faahmly. And then delivered a pretty comprehensive verbal smackdown to them.

I imagine many watching social workers would have been shouting "JUUUURSTIIIICE!", possibly in the voice of Martin Sheen, at that point.