Response to a Colleague

I read a post on a social work forum by someone who said she was not coping and asked if she was burnt out. This is my slightly edited response.
" I am so angry about what has been done to the profession and what is happening to my colleagues and me. I joined it in the early '80s so I remember pre ICS social work. You know, it was OK. We had reasonable caseloads and time to think and discuss things. It's RIDICULOUS what has happened and I wish that at the time I'd been bold enough to shout about it!
Instead I left! But I saw the trend. It's a long story but  I rejoined after 10 years hoping for a little improvement. Instead I find it like a nightmare! Why on earth did I go back? I keep thinking, this can't be real. Professionals being treated like naughty, irresponsible children who just can't be trusted, but let's keep giving them more and more work and maybe that will make things better.Funny if it wasn't so tragic. I've got my ways of coping and one of those is a commitment to my own wellbeing no matter what. One way I cope is to write, mostly about the ridiculousness. It helps me keep a sense of perspective and, well, you never know, one day it could be evidence to use  in suing someone or defending myself.
We are dictated to by the ICS system which makes management by deadlines so easy. It is crazy that when management decide to pretty up their statistics, (if an Ofsted inspection is due for example), they can say all IAs to be done in the required 10 days...or else, veiled threats and pressure applied by Team Managers. Too bad about the quality of the work..It is so stupid. Up the pressure, down the morale, up the risk. Insane. The system is insane. Social work (especially frontline children's services) has become a tyranny. and there's so much hypocrisy. F........, like almost every social worker I know where I am currently working, is enduring an iniquitous system.
One colleague last week said "This is slavery" and I've often thought so too. It's "command and control"  social work ( Term used by in Signs of Safety, Turnell & Edwards)   I'm wary of "stress management" approaches, whick do not tackle the core problem of lack of resources coupled with ludicrous expectations. Talk all you like about protecting children, but if you don't put money into it and if you overwork your staff, you really don't mean it, Mr Gove or whoever else. Pretending that it's all down to individual social workers performance and let's blame and shame the social worker is so handy.
I agree with S.......   about anger. After all even Jesus cast the moneychangers out of the temple! I am the mildest of people on the surface but there is an anger in me that says, you can't hoodwink me into thinking that open plan offices are good for social workers, that it's ok to work regularly till 10pm at home or at the office, never take a lunch break,  it's OK that I should have an undoable caseload, and that ICS is a real boon in the way it is used! 
Without that detachment, I would totally "buy in" to the It's Your Fault, You Bad, brainwashing. And I do at times, not being superwoman, and then I really don't feel good....It's a bright red light to stop and get outside the system, mentally. See it for what it is, Emperor's New Clothes.
And it is all totally unnecessary! I came into the profession to help people. Why should I be bullied and persecuted about minutiae? If an IA is late, so what? if it's a real risk, you act. The rest can wait!  The Government should never have legislated about our practice in that way. When supervision becomes about the management checklist, and the "practice issues" slot in a team meeting is a knuckle rapping about ICS, then if you haven't got a team manager who at least understands (even if they have to toe the party line outwardly).....I'd move on asap.
And  maybe I'll rejoin BASW again and shout this time! I like the idea of calling in Health and Safety. It's all so Orwellian, just a little later than 1984. Perhaps we could do something revolutionary. Any ideas? I think we have to connect somehow. Unity is power!"