Is it just me or are those who working in Social Services completely useless?

How many times do we have to be told…

we've learnt from our mistakes and procedures are now in place that would prevent this from ever happening again

.

I look at Social Services and wonder just who is being recruited and what they think they're doing. How many more cases making headline news will it take for something quite drastic to change this profession? I note also that no one is being sacked, no one is carrying the can, no one is being held responsible.

So are you going to apply for a job there then and show everyone how its done?

seems like a virtually impossible and thankless job to be honest.

It's a difficult job in practice and things arn't as easy and straight forward as they may seem, but it's easy to pass comment / judgememt on.
I've dealt with a lot of social works in the past, and yes there are good one's and bad one's but there's more to social services than just the social worker, who is the easiest one to blame when something goes wrong, when it's likely that there procedures they have to work to are whats wrong.

No, but I can help you with your puncuation. 😉

I would suspect that morale is at an all time low, so not a good place to be looking for employment. And therein lies some of the problems I suspect. Those few whom I know who have been attracted into the profession and one friend who teaches on the fringes to social workers, has, I’m sad to say, led me to have a real distrust of all social workers, so when I read yet another case such as this why is it that am I angry & let down as it seems that nothing’s changed over the years?

Further more, I've only ever seen one SS report and it was so biased and so loaded I immediately took it up with that Counties service hedshed. It was a very amateur piece of reporting.

Perhaps others have had more positive experiences with SS, and I'm not seeing the true worth that never gets reported. I just have very real and nagging doubts, that's all.

Social workers are probably the most useless and self promoting people ever,they have no concept of people as people,they rely on bits of paper, and so called procedures that have so many holes in them,they would sink faster than the titanic,but they change and abuse their own rules and if all else fails,they blame outside people usually the victims, who sometimes are dead,as is the case with all the child deaths.

We need a cull of this useless profesion.From bitter experience,i speak.

What about the hundreds of children and vulnerable people who are protected by social services every year? what about the fact that the perpertrators are quite likely to be devious and calculating, given that they have everything to lose.

I can't work out why some people want to work as a social worker, or prison officer, or police, but I'm damn glad they do. Must be great working for a service that the media constantly berates, must make you proud to join in too.

A pal of mine is still awaiting a CAFCAS report on one of his children. It was ordered by the courts in mid August and it’s so delayed it will be ready next month.

Pathetic.

Well said Nick – At last some reason in this thread!

It's usually the paperwork, not the people that cause the problems. Not always though. Like every profession there are bad eggs.

CAFCAS report's are done by CAFCAS which isn't social services.

Customer of mine,hard working skilled worker,working night shift,2 small kids,finishes work at 8.00am comes home and has a can of lager,before seeing his kids off to school.

One day a so called freind calls tround to drop her kids of so they can go to school with hs kids,sees can of lager on table,reports it to the school,that the father is drinking at 8.00am,school staff(in some made up job)social worker and some othere bisi-bodi,turn up the next day to question him about his drinking so early in the morning,in front of the kids.

The family was gutted,and where planning on moving to another area.

The term "GET A LIFE" socialworkers,come to mind

NIck my dad or all the kids that where killed had no protection from the social workers,and they joined forces to say they where right.

so Project, are you advocating investigation and intervention, or doing nothing at all- it's a bit difficult to tell.

The term "GET A LIFE" socialworkers,come to mind

err, maybe the friend, who presumably knew that he worked nights, should get a life?

Ah, it's a bash another public service thread.

One day a so called freind calls tround to drop her kids of so they can go to school with hs kids,sees can of lager on table,reports it to the school,that the father is drinking at 8.00am,school staff(in some made up job)social worker and some othere bisi-bodi,turn up the next day to question him about his drinking so early in the morning,in front of the kids.

The family was gutted,and where planning on moving to another area.

The term "GET A LIFE" socialworkers,come to mind

And what if there was a problem? I'm sure if something went wrong it'll be all over the news that social workers did nothing.

Its a profession where it's damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Skiving, self-interested and incompetent were my thoughts circa 30yrs ago.

I'd love to join and make a difference but I can see it would be a lone Salmon jumping against the flow of the river with hungry bears poised.

Intervention and investigation, by people who have syufficent back bone and morals to uphold complaints,not to lie and lie repeatedly,then say nothing happened despite independant witness reports saying otherwise,to come mob handed to meetings 14 at one meeting,and never apologising or doing anything to stop similar things hapening in future.

Hora, that's beautiful.

Nice to see the usual suspects here – knee jerking away

Its a thankless task – intervene and you are breaking up families. Don't intervene and you are negligent.

Haringey of baby peter fame is something like 25% vacancy rate – and with a salary for degree qualified people in low £20 000s (IIRC)

Demonised and then micromanaged by successive ministers – its hardly surprising that morale is low as is effectiveness.

so all of you that are complaining about how poor they are I expect you to go away and qualify and then work in the profession to show how good you can be at it. Another great example of people wanting fantastic services without either wanting to pay for it or understanding the limitations of what social workers can do

~To give an flavour of the sorts of issue have a read of this – its about fostering services but gives you some idea of what goes on.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/05/britains-foster-care-crisis

Haringey is appalling. Have you read what the head of did to try and bring some ethnic sensitivity to the department? Its mind-boggling and now the same person is taking the council to court for wrongful dismissal.

They employed Social workers from diverse places as Zimbabwe, South Africa etc. WHY COULDNT SHE JUST CONCENTRATE ON CHILD PROTECTION ISSUES AND CURRENT STAFF DISCIPLINARY?

Anyway- apperently they spent most of their time dealing with relocation issues, cultural problems for he relocated new staff and absense due to the relocation etc etc.

I actually hit my head against the bedroom wall when I read this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/17/underfunding-social-work-risks-childrens-lives

Hora one of your more stupid posts. – the reason why recruitment was done from outside of the UK was that no one from the UK wanted to work in social work in london – knowing that they barely got a living wage and would be put under huge stress constantly trying to do the impossible and under constant scrutiny and supervision.

Haringay is now understaffed by a huge amount – even having recruited from far away.

……turn up the next day to question him about his drinking so early in the morning,in front of the kids.

The family was gutted,and where planning on moving to another area.

The term "GET A LIFE" socialworkers,come to mind

It must have been a totally devastating experience for him 😐

How is he coping now ? I hope he is successful in starting a new life in another area.

.

Social workers are probably the most useless and self promoting people ever,they have no concept of people as people……..they change and abuse their own rules and if all else fails,they blame outside people usually the victims, who sometimes are dead,as is the case with all the child deaths.

I have often wondered why they do that 😕

………. I guess it's probably because they are just basically evil ?

Skiving, self-interested and incompetent were my thoughts circa 30yrs ago.

I'd love to join and make a difference but I can see it would be a lone Salmon jumping against the flow of the river with hungry bears poised.

The post of the day, if not of the epoch. 😀

So man who can't avoid own bedroom wall with head thinks he should be in charge of social work?

The mind boggles…

Anyway, lets have all the internet social engineers ideas regarding social work; I'm sure we can come up with a solution before bedtime…

I know one family locally who foster lots of kids.
They get plenty of £££. One of these kids spends most of his time in London, they never see him from one week to the next but they still get paid.

Maybe an isolated case. Maybe not. Maybe I'm seeing just rotten apples.

One of my ex's teaches an Ology to SS students. She's convinced they've all got serious issues, axes to grind, crusades to embark upon. She's not got a single good word to say about any of them (when she is drawn on the subjest)in any year over the years she's been teaching these classes. Almost all them are female and she's less than impressed as they all seem to have their own agendas.

Be afriad, be very afraid of the Social Workers the UK is turning out; although there was no mention of an salmon – maybe it's a Jewish Social Worker you need for that!

So what do you propose we do about it?

How do we attract the high calibre people like this site attracts, and encourage them into social work?

I can see both sides of the debate when it comes to fostering, yes the fee's can be rather nice, and if you foster with an agency the money can equal a full time wage, but then again why shouldn't it. At the end of the day foster parents need to be avaliable for various meetings, medicals etc etc for the foster kids, also if they have any issues, then the foster parent needs to be free to deal with it. At the end of the day there not the foster parents own children so why shouldn't they be paid to look after them.

One of my ex's teaches an Ology to SS students……….. She's not got a single good word to say about any of them

Well I'm impressed that she is able to continue to teach them, even though she apparently despises them.

Good on her I reckon …….it must be very hard for her (and probably for her pupils too)

Sadly neither Hora nor I are on any county council hedshed tiers.
Evidently the sort of people attracted by a degree and career in SS are perhaps the sorts we least require to look after or most vulnerable and at risk in our communities; sad but true.

Again, sad to report that the close friend I do have – who has just gained a 1st class honours degree (5yrs with the OU) and works alongside SS – has decided in her infinate wisdom to drop even more hours and go for a Phd instead of going back to work full time as it's a tad too stressful.

As regards the ex's classes – she actually fears them! She deals with loonies with drug, GBH, court orders and deportation notices against them and all manner of other socially less-conformist students, its the SS workers who are the most feared!

t1 – have you any idea of the issues and difficulties Social workers have to face? Have you read the articles in those links I posted?

Lets hear your solutions then – remember you have to attract high calibre people for less than the average earnings. These people have to be degree qualified.

Then you have to organise and motivate the staff. You have to make difficult judgement decisions about families. Do you let the children at risk stay with the families or not? If you remove them then you have rto find somewhere for them to go. Yo have about 75% of the staf you require and every day more micromangaement edicts come down from above.

Do you have the personal strength to deal with tales of child rape, physical abuse and other assorted nasties all day every day? Have you any idea of what this is like? I know I haven't.

So I suggest strongly you find out a bit about this and then give us your solutions – or shut the **** up about something you clearly haven't got the slightest idea about.

Evidently the sort of people attracted by a degree and career in SS are perhaps the sorts we least require to look after or most vulnerable and at risk in our communities; sad but true.

Lets see the evidence then for this sweeping statement.

Ti29er

Of the highest order

TJ: here

The proof is in the pudding.

It's a problem seen in many other reports into cases, the most recent major case being that of Baby Peter. The issues raised include professionals being over-optimistic about parents, not focusing on the child, not sharing information and lacking confidence to act.

The authorities say services have changed and now the victims in this family would be better protected. But in this case the mistakes have been made over 35 years, spanning many changes in policies.

Attacks on the victims led to 18 pregnancies. Nine of the children were born, two of whom died on the day of their birth.

The rest of the pregnancies were miscarried or aborted.

The abuse started when the women were pre-pubescent, and they were badly beaten if they failed to comply.

"It only really needed one person with tenacity to actually keep pushing and pushing this and we might have had early recognition and action been taken."

Evidently the sort of people who insist on abusing and insulting SS are perhaps the sorts we least require to actually comment on how to improve the situation; sad but true.

Fixed it for ya!

Is it just me or are those who working in Social Services completely useless?

Yes they're all useless, every one of them. I know them all and I can say that without fear of contradiction.

Also, all teachers, all politicians, all planners, all estate agents, all police, all clowns, all builders, everyone who works in the travel industry, all bankers etc etc.

What do you do BTW TI29er?

Correction: just about everyone is horrified at these cases.
And they keep happening.
They say they've changed – every press conference has the same lies regurgitated.

I just don't see an end to thses press conferences in full glare of the World's media in the years ahead and that makes me sad for all concerned.
I don't have a solution, but nor did I offer one up but I'm angry that those most at risk in our society seem to be very poorly served by those charged with helping.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8497277.stm

Seems like some of them are doing alright. The ones I come across at work are generally very committed and hard working, you get some daft ones but it's the same in any job. I think crikey's fixed it.

TI – what you fail to recognise is that these mistakeas – and that is what they are are a tiny proportion.

In something like social work mistakes will be made, Things will be missed. Its just that the mistakes are so obvious and get so much press.

What you don't see is the thousnad and thousands of positve results.

What yo also forget is the headlines of " social worker broke up my family" We have had one of those on this thread – the case about the can of beer. Damned whatever they do.

Did you know child murders are vastly down? they are.

How you get from the mistakes that are made – and in the case you highlight by healthcare workers and police as well as other agecies to

Evidently the sort of people attracted by a degree and career in SS are perhaps the sorts we least require to look after or most vulnerable and at risk in our communities; sad but true.

is a leap of logicv that is quite breathtaking.

So what do you do to make the world a better place? Try doing something – you will find out how hard it is.

I qualified as a Social Worker three years ago and it's not as low paid across the board as people would assume. Most of the people who graduated alongside me went into jobs paying around £30k. This is in Scotland though and with council's who have completed the single status pay agreements and I'm aware that there are many local authorities where Social Worker's start on far less pay.

Thankfully, perhaps because of some of the recent stories in the media, there appears to be more acceptance that generally we are not well paid for the job we are asked to do. It can be pretty difficult at times particularly with the constant tinkering from senior management, changes in policy, interference from councillors keen to take up the case of those that shout the loudest, the ineptness of some admin 'assistance', slashed budgets, big caseloads, big waiting lists etc but I enjoy the job 🙂 It get's me out and about in the community and it's never boring, I meet a lot of amazing people and work alongside lots of excellent other professionals. T and C's are generally good although I never usually manage to take back hours worked and there's no overtime.

Regarding the tragedies over the last recent years I feel that any profession involving humans working with humans will inevitably result in things going wrong. Other professions (Police, NHS etc) make mistakes which have resulted in unnecessary death and harm as well. Things aren't black and white unfortunately.