How Social Work Would Kill the Soul.

I came home last night and lay on the sofa and wept. Not quite literally, but it was perhaps worse. I lay and felt just how it is to be doing social work in Britain today. And it was not even that bad a day.At least I wasn't rushing like a maniac! And a situation that could have been really difficult was resolved when the mum involved sobered up quickly and was able to collect her daughter, safely. I even got thanked by a teacher for my help! Now that is a first!

But my colleague was feeling so much pressure, I really worry for her. She is going through what I will call the AGony experience. A youngster was placed in a "Short Term Residential Unit" in an emergency. The girl is a teenager, angry, confused, feeling let down I imagine, in all sorts of ways. My colleague does not know her from Eve, but being allocated the case she is expected to get on with it.

What does that mean, though? Does it mean spending time with the young person, getting to know her and finding out what has gone wrong and what might be needed to put it right? You might hope so, wouldn't you?
Not exactly. It means coming to a meeting with Staff and the girl, within 48 hours of her placement, but not to have a real discussion with the girl. No, we must have a Placement Agreement meeting. At that meeting, my colleague is grilled by staff from the Unit, about where the required forms are, the Essential Information Record 1, The Placement Plan Part 1, The Care Plan....

My colleague, who has been busy with one or two other matters in the intervening 48 hours,  that's 2 working days. For example, preparing a report for a Child Protection Review and attending it, finding a new placement for 2 teenage boys whose father does not want them to come home, and one or two other little matters.  She does not have time to complete these forms.Shocking is it not?

Some time after 5pm on Friday,  someone from the Unit rings and jumps up and down on the phone about the illegality of the placement without the forms. The Unit has done an audit and these forms are required that very day. No, they cannot wait until Monday. The sky might fall, obviously.

My colleague, lets call her Blessing, has to run around, putting something on paper, finding a fax number and sending off those forms. She is experiencing modern social work, where anybody and everybody has the right to question your practice and tell you what to do. Because the system says in black and white exactly what is required from the social worker. It is a long list of forms, many pages long, to be done within certain timescales. So Johnny or Jack or Mabel or Maude, any worker, can ask the social worker for the required paperwork at any time.  There is a preferred order to do this of course, as follows: - in front of clients, after 5 pm on a Friday, via an email circulated to all your actual managers up to and including The Almighty Himself probably, "Where is Form A, Form B, Form C, Form D etc etc Form X, Form Y, Form Z?"

Meanwhile back to the AGony experience....what happened at this absolutely essential Placement Planning meeting, with the angry young lady having her first experience in the "care" of the Local Authority?
Well, so much time is spent filling in the form in order to have a record of the meeting, that the girl gets frustrated, because it seems to her that people are more interesting in filling in their forms than in listening to her and what is really on her mind. She walks out of the meeting. Blessing is grilled about the forms and also feels like walking out, but that would not be professional. Or would it?

I know how that Grilling feels, because it happened to me several times. I felt humiliated, put on the spot, undermined, and abused. And I am meant to be the person with the overview of the young person and their needs! The system has created an arrangement of strings, and so many other people can yank on those strings whenever they choose. Everything is urgent, must be done now, can't wait. The Forms take over, and creative, compassionate, constructive thinking disappears.

Everybody loses, the young client who more than anything needs to be treated like a human being, not another sausage to be processed. The social worker who ends up feeling abused and despairing that she or he can ever get on with the real work. The residential worker who thinks that harrassing the social worker is part of the job description....

So does Blessing go off for the weekend with any sense of achievement, or even relief? No, she is absolutely furious, resentful and stressed our a tidy sum. The foresees not getting home, again, until after did not come out of it well at all. Services for children were not satisfactory. Is there any chance of getting the money back from Price Waterhouse, and undoing the damage done by their recommendations? Probably not, because the political will to fund proper services is not there.

It is so much easier to carry on piling the pressure onto social workers and scapegoating them at every opportunity. This is a slavery which would kill the soul if such a thing was possible. It is time to end that slavery. One way or another, it will end. Meantime the soul shrinks into a tiny corner and waits for liberation.