[Closed] Social Services in the UK. Marks out of 10?

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 [b]Nick[/b] - 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 ?

[i]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.
[/i]

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

[img] [/img]

Of the highest order

TJ: [url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/8559750.stm ]here[/url]

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.

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

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.

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.

so the conclusion is that actually yes - it is just you that is completely useless TI29er. A completely useless parasite

It makes me very sad to read the sort of ill-informed crap that people come out with on this forum sometimes. TJ, I admire your spirit, but I just couldn't be arsed to try and have a debate with some of these pillocks.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that its better to point and laugh at the silly men.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that its better to point and laugh at the silly men.

Rather than address the fact that a very large part of the population have some serious worries/concerns about social services? Those worries/concerns may only be based on the rare, yet horrible, cases which come to light, but the public image of social services in the UK is shot to sh1t.

Far better to try and explain the good, and to try and reassure people that it isn't as bad as the media would love us to believe.

Rather than address the fact that a very large part of the population have some serious worries/concerns about social services?

What do you base this assertion on?

Actually I suspect that a very large proportion of the population feel the same way about social workers as they do about almost every other issue - totally disinterested.

In fact, even amongst the people on here who have "worries/concerns" how many of them do anything other than bleat on at the captive audience of a forum?

How many have done more than read the headlines, how many have written to an MP, joined a pressure group, supported a charity, volunteered!!! etc etc.

Sod all would be my guess.

Furthermore I would guess that those that have actually done something useful themsleves are probably more likely to be on the "give them a break" side of the argument.

Of course, like yourself CFH, I'm just plucking these assertions out of nowhere.

I work closely with a number of SW. I am regularly frustrated by lack of action to support me in my role (education), but more importantly, the kids in our care.

Behind all of this is the knowledge that the local SWD is understaffed and under pressure. A number of the SW are relatively young and inexperienced, and poorly paid relative to surrounding areas.

It is important to remember that the 'clients' are not generally the most responsive or supportive members of society, and are often looking for someone else to take responsibility.

Schools have kids for 6-7 hours a day, and society expects SWD to be on the ball for the other 17-18 hours, often forgetting about the support that families - uncles, aunts, grandparents, brothers and sisters - are capable of providing, yet do not feel compelled to do so.

In short SWD are underpaid, understaffed, and under pressure. This means priorities have to be established, and your priorities may not be the same as mine, and they're both likely to differ from the next man's.

What's required is a societal mandate to fund and support the necessary interventions. Currently we're desperately short of Foster Carers, and this needs adressing too...

... but who wants to take on destructive 14-year-old with a drink and drug problem and a severe attachment disorder? Form an orderly queue now...

Roll on the day when we staff frontline services with management consultants, [i]Daily Wail[/i] editors, internet blowhards and political think-tankers. They need to show us how it's [i]really[/i] done.

[i]Far better to try and explain the good, and to try and reassure people that it isn't as bad as the media would love us to believe.[/i]

Salutary words, given UK media-idiocy. Quiet success doesn't tend to make for good copy, sadly.

In an ideal world, yes Captain.
Here, where wild and ill judged internet warrior nonsense is the chosen currency, why waste even virtual ink?
The kind of comments seen here are like the ramblings of a tramp who wrapped himself in the Daily Mail after a hard day shouting at pigeons.
Laughter, the best medicine.

Trout Wrestler has it spot on - though I may be biased as MrsSwadey is a highly qualified SW currently enjoying a well earned career break by trying to bring up our two little ones in such a way that none of her former colleagues have to get involved.....

TroutWrestler - Member
I work closely with a number of SW. I am regularly frustrated by lack of action to support me in my role (education), but more importantly, the kids in our care.

I work in healthcare, and in my local area the 3 local SWDs seem to do anything except take kids on, often citing the Common Assessment Framework as a multiagency responsibility, which it is, but their lack of action on a child in my responsibility last year resulted in a unplanned teenage pregnancy, because the young person was "co-operating" with the agencies (health & education) involved.

Individual SWs are good, but the systems (& maybe managers on a local level????) hinder what they can & cannot do.

After reading the thread in full I feel I need the help of a social worker. some good opinions ruined by egos baiting with one another. For me its a hell of A job to take on & one I'm not even. Remotely qualified to comment on.on the whole they do a hell of a job from what little I know.

Utter bobbins most of them. In my personal experience I've seen horrific incompetence. Girl in my daughter's nursery class wasn't picked up from school, SS called. SS take three hours to turn up, then leave the kid with a neighbour who happens to be in the front garden a couple of doors down. Meanwhile the mother is being raped and tortured to death in the house they didn't even knock on the door of. Another time, rather than organise a proper place of safety for a child who turned up battered at school, sent the kid home with the school bursar who was pressurised into it as she had sat till after 6pm waiting for someone to drag themselves the two miles from the office since 10am. Another case a child needs a place of safety after parental assault, SS turn up late with nothing organised, asks the abusive parent if they can suggest somewhere. He suggest his mate up the road, SS agree. His mate's children are subject to a child protection order due to neglect, battery and sexual abuse, SS happy to use it as a place of safety. There might be three people in the whole department locally I might trust to even try to do a proper job. Welcome to Doncaster. At least if they sacked the lot and didn't have a service at all, people wouldn't assume the job was done, and the criminal behaviour of abusive parents could be dealt with by the Police as it usually should be.

Don't forget, the managers are struggling to implement the (ever changing) political will of their elected leaders.

MLC, asa result of your concerns, are you now registered as an emergency Foster Carer? Sounds like Donny are in need.

midlifecrashes - 2 issues - Doncaster social services are acknowledged to be failing following the recent cases so hopefully will get sorted out now at last and why did no one turn up? How many staff on duty? How many hours had they worked? its a service struggling to cope with a shortage of staff and those there are demoralised

Finally - is your knowledge direct or hearsay?

Girl in my daughter's nursery class wasn't picked up from school, SS called. SS take three hours to turn up, then leave the kid with a neighbour who happens to be in the front garden a couple of doors down. Meanwhile the mother is being raped and tortured to death in the house they didn't even knock on the door

The mother is being raped and tortured to death in the house ? That must have made the news surely.........have you got a link ?

BTW, I can't believe that it took social services [i]three hours[/i] to turn up when a child wasn't collected from a nursery school 😯

OK, maybe 20 minutes - or even half an hour, but THREE HOURS !

What do these lazy social workers [i]actually do[/i] all day long ..... ffs 😕

.....and as you quite rightly point out, just a simple knock on the front door, would have put a stop to the raping and murdering nonsense.

TJ is your knowledge of ss direct or hearsay?

midlifecrashes - if they had knocked on the correct door I suppose it would have been their job to prevent the alleged rape, torture and death?

One thing that Social Workers have to deal with a lot is other agencies passing on cases or situations to them because of a 'social work might be able to help' attitude, sometimes it seems as if the buck is being passed. Admittedly this may stem from the lack of clarity about just what Social Work's role should be and to be fair joint working seems to be improving.

To lighten to mood a little, and this is totally true by the way, our local SWD has 'Walk On By' as one of the tracks on the telephone hold music, whilst Psychological Services has 'Closest Thing To Crazy'. Incredible, but true.

zeicke - go and do a bit of googling. It's not exactly a secret that Doncaster Social Services has experienced several of the issues that TJ describes with tragic consequences over the last few years.

zeicke - Member

TJ is your knowledge of ss direct or hearsay?

A mix

if they had knocked on the correct door I suppose it would have been their job to prevent the alleged rape, torture and death?

Well maybe not. But if they had at least been bothered to knock on the door, then they would have perhaps been able to identify the rapist murderer after he had opened the front door.

Direct and current TJ. I'm chair of governors of a primary school with a varied catchment. Deputy head spends 75%+ of their time on CP issues, since without that there would be no consistent attendees to core meetings, you never see the same faces twice, and every new face starts at the front of the notes and is never up to speed before they move on. I've spent a lot of time shadowing this work (it's a big commitment for a school and we need to be on top of what happens) and offering support. We've pioneered systems between schools in the area to make sure kids don't fall out of the system as they were doing previously since abusers twigged long ago that moving your kid to a different school made all SS involvement magically disappear since a referral from a new school triggered a new file. We work closely with the SureStart as they have similar issues. If we didn't stay 100% on top of the cases and left it to SS, we know from previous experience preventable harm would occur. We've made the commitment that's not going to happen on our watch. As for the SS management in Doncaster, well there have been some changes at the top, but unfortunately the corruption and incompetence extends so far around Doncaster that it's not somewhere where the good guys want to come to work.

So, after all this, how do you/we/they fix it?
How do we develop, maintain and operate a system of social care that keeps everyone happy?
Given that social workers are considered fair game by the majority of the right wing press, how do we fund it?, given that people are encouraged to think of social workers as either interfering busybodies or ****less do nothings, how do we staff the service?

Given that we expect expect miracles, how do we go on?

The STW keyboard jocks seem to be in full force tonight 🙁

Keep reading the Daily Wail to cultivate your sneering attitude on life in general or as been suggested already, offer to assist those less fortunate than youself.

It's good that we only ever see the bad side of things, you never see the good side, why because it doesn't sell papers, or get the public interest going.
If I could afford to go to uni full time I would happily retrain as a social worker, why? I've seen what a crap one can do or not do as the case may be, and I've also seen some good ones in action, and i'd certainly want to be one of those.

So, after all this, how do you/we/they fix it?

Well midlifecrashes suggests that we scrap social services :

"[i] if they sacked the lot and didn't have a service at all, people wouldn't assume the job was done, and the criminal behaviour of abusive parents could be dealt with by the Police as it usually should be. [/i]"

You can't really argue with that, can you ?

And I bet it wouldn't take the police so long to turn up to a nursery class when a child isn't picked up.......for a start, they've got proper stuff like sirens and blue flashing lights.

Maybe split it up, some under Police some under health authority control, maybe some in education welfare. There are simply too many agencies involved in many of these cases. There is also an overextension of a culture of localism, where national statutory duties don't really need reinterpreting and prioritising at a local level. This might be partly that national government doesn't feel like getting it's hands dirty with messy services like social services, care for the elderly etc. Better for them to delegate this stuff to local level, without adequate funding then they can blame someone else when it goes tits up.

But there's problems with the mental health service as well.

I'm lucky enough to have never had any need to deal with social services at all, however as having no knowledge of a subject is no bar to expressing an opinion on here, then I'll chip in my tuppenceworth.

I strongly suspect that for every horrific case that makes the papers there are another 1000, maybe 10000, where the job is done properly and the kids/adults are helped.

That's not to say mistakes don't happen. They do in every job. I work in IT and we screw up on a regular basis. However when we do we don't have some hysterical tabloid or ill-informed forum poster berating us.

But there's problems with the mental health service as well.

Only in that it's not directly controlled by central government. There is an overextension of a culture of localism. This is because national government doesn't feel like getting it's hands dirty - better for them to delegate this stuff to local level, without adequate funding, then they can blame someone else when it goes tits up.

Bring mental health under the control of the national government, and everything will be just fine.

Midlife crashes - fair enough - and it sounds like you are trying to do your bit. Good for you

Failing depts as Doncaster social services is can be turned round - but it takes time and will. Hopefully getting somne good folk in at the top will be the start.

I think things will be different when Shiny Dave points his blue light sabre into the dark corners of English life.

Once we work out who the deserving poor are, then we can make sure they get what they deserve.

Wow.

I think things will be different when Shiny Dave points his blue light sabre into the dark corners of English life.

Even more localism ? Replace VAT with a local sales tax so town halls can fund themselves ?

[url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/11/michael-white-political-briefing ]Tories learn to love localism[/url]

Not read all of this but some of the work that is done by these people is amazing, as always it is the odd incident that grabs the headlines and all get tarred with the same brush, what about the ones who have to visit on their own, going in to houses that are no-go for the police, gangsters, pimps, drug dealers, every move being watched by some gun toting thug, dealing with ethnic families where beating sh1t out of women and children is a 'family value', dealing with people under threat of honour killing etc, etc - and all this is inevitably handled by an unsupported woman on a very poor wage - my hat goes off to ALL of them and to the thousands of men, women and children that they help

MLC,

I applaud you on your commitment. You seem to be doing more than your fair share.

However, the only "fix" I see for social services and most other parts of society is when lots of other people join in and do their bit too.

OTOH are you not being just a bit unfair if you are linking

Meanwhile the mother is being raped and tortured to death in the house they didn't even knock on the door

with

unfortunately the corruption and incompetence extends so far around Doncaster that it's not somewhere where the good guys want to come to work.

As ernie lynch alluded to, it seems you are blaming some things on SS that aren't actually their fault, or if they are, might well be down to overwork and poor leadership (right from government) rather than corrupt or incompetent individuals.

But given all that, don't you personally feel better for being involved in society and dong something positive?

One of the massive problems we (society) needs to overcome is to get over to people that far from being just a chore, getting involved in community matters is actually rather satisfying.

One of the massive problems we (society) needs to overcome is to get over to people that far from being just a chore, getting involved in community matters is actually rather satisfying.

Let's not bring Tony Blair into it !!!

Ti29er - Member

No, but I can help you with your [b]puncuation[/b].