I have been meaning to do this for so long. Even if no one else ever reads it, I have to let off steam about this ridiculous situation. It is a Saturday and I am still fuming about work. It can't be good for my health. When I am with my colleagues sometimes it feels as if we are in a war zone and I am just fed up with it. I qualified as a social worker in the 1980s, I enjoyed it and did some great work for 13 years. I did an advanced qualification, trained as a counsellor, had a great job in that for 7 years. After a career break I thought I would try social work again. Surely, I thought, they will have realized that going down the route of more and more bureaucracy is madness.
No, actually, "they" haven't.
In fact 3 weeks after I got a locum post, after months of trying, The Baby P Tragedy hit the headlines. Ever since then, I feel as if I have slipped into a nightmare which is very hard to wake up from.
This blog is not so much about clients, but about the reality of the job that social work has become, in frontline childcare. It is about what I find outrageous, abusive and dangerous....for me, for colleagues and of course for clients too. I don't plan to stay in social work, as I am not willing to be a victim of the system and I am selfish enough to believe that I should be able to feel some satisfaction in my work, some sense of it helping people, and some freedom to be creative. So social work is one of the last places I would choose to spend my precious, God given life and talents.
And I know it is not just me. I hear colleagues express their frustration at trying to do the impossible, prevent chaos and juggle with difficult and demanding situations.
For example, yesterday a colleague was taking a child home after some time in accommodation. The signs were clear that Dad, the sole carer, did not want him back, but management were asking why my colleague had not returned the boy home. So she arranged to do this with an obviously reluctant Dad, who said he would be at home to receive his son. Under some pressure from my colleague, of course. We collect the boy from school, take him to Dad's and no one is in! Fantastic! So now the two lady social workers have a boy in their care, no Dad, a mobile phone with poor reception and a group of the boy's friends standing about curiously.
4 hours later, the boy and his brother are placed in a cab to go to a new foster family. My colleague has been grilled by managers, filled in forms, we have had to entertain and supervise 2 difficult boys. The day has been about 11 hours long, we could not get to the loo, and there was no money to buy the boys any food.
I get thanked for helping my colleague, but she leaves the office with a huge sense of anger about how she has been blamed, and management don't take responsibility for pressurizing her into creating this situation.
When I worked in social work before, there was not this horrendous blame culture to the extent that it exists today. How can we possibly do good work when we feel that every "i" must be dotted and every "t" must be crossed, or else...run the risk that it's your name that will be appearing in the newspaper headlines!
Social workers go into the job, or used to, to help people. I think there is now a breed of social worker who simply enjoys telling people what to do, and finding fault with people. It is a toxic system and I absolutely will not allow it to rob me of joy in living, self esteem and dignity in return for the comparative pittance that we are paid.