Undercover social services

[justine1]

Hi

On C4 AT 8pm(C4+ 9pm) there is dispatches programme on undercover social worker,I believe its focus is on the elderly,but may be worth watching.

 

 

[KezT]

did anyone else watch? absolutely shocking!!!!!!

[Mumble]

did anyone else watch? absolutely shocking!!!!!!

I did watch it and what we saw was very shocking, however we don't know how representative this was, how much editing happened, or whether this was exceptional or not. Yes, it very clearly illustrated much of what we read in the mass media, but I'm not convinced this is the whole story, but rather plays into the 'horrible uncaring social workers' image that people like to bring up too easily. Social workers from the same department worked with my family when I was a child, and I have nothing but praise for their dedication and the time they spent with us, ensuring our safely. We saw nothing of the very positive and necessary work social workers do in this programme and it felt very unbalanced to me.

[baddad]

did anyone else watch? absolutely shocking!!!!!!

 

Yes, I watched, but sadly didn't find it shocking (in the sense of it holding any surprises), just very very worrying. More than anything it showed just how stacked things are against SS being able to do their jobs - either by the mounds of paperwork they have to complete to ensure that if any s*** hits any fans there will be absolutley nobody for it to come back on except the poor sod who was trying their damndest to stop it from happening, or by the damned if you do and damned if you don't bleeding heart liberalism that make it impossible for them to protect kids but crucifies them for not doing so. All of the children in danger in this programme were in danger because of their home environments - whether it was because mum refused to stop seeing her violent lover or taking her drugs or whatever or because at fifteen they 'couldn't go home and grandad didn't have room for them'.

Along with teaching, this is another job I couldn't do for love nor money.

 

L&P

 

BD

 

OH PS - just seen mumble's post. TBH I didn't see that much that reflected that badly on the people 'on the frontline' at all, apart from one women saying she hated going out on calls and would be happier sitting in the office all day. Considering the calls they were asked to go on, and the absolute impossibility of getting any real, long term and beneficial results from doing so I can, sadly, see why she might feel that way. What was expressed, repeatedly, was the disillusionment many officers felt at not being able to help or do anything constructive, and while they might have expressed that in an 'un-pc' way the reality is that they had no idea they were being filmed and were talking openly and honestly about that frustration.

 

 

Edited June 9, 2010 by baddad

[justine1]

Baddad your post summed up everything I wanted to write

My friend qualified as a SW last yr,we worked together at a care home while she was doing her degree.She told me some shocking stories and like the man in the programme,she was often left to do work she wasnt qualified to do.She constantly looked exhausted.So most of the programme was no surprise to me.

 

Mumble is right that they didnt show much positives,but the focus was to show how overstreached SS is and I guess with all the cuts its not going to get better

I am glad they showed older children in particular because the age group 14-17 are often over looked as being independent and harder to find foster families esp those who have been to numerous foster homes.

 

I really think,generally speaking,SS do a very good job.I have experience of SS and feel they did their best I moved counties though so for nearly two mths I was in limbo but other than that they were very good.

[baddad]

I think one other thing you have to consider is the nature of the programme itself. An 'undercover' pretty much sets out to shock and sensationalise and show those being investigated in the worst possible light... By definition you're not going to see an edit that shows the targeted group in any favourable light, because there is no point whatsoever to an undercover report that reveals everything in the garden is rosey. Take that into account, and the fact that the worst they could come up with (outside of showing hugely overworked and underappreciated people being taken advantage of by their employers) was one person moaning that they didn't like doing house calls in dirty houses and an admission of the fairly obvious fact that cutbacks inevitably lead to reduced services and some crative accounting, and it suggests the rot isn't quite as bad as some would like us to believe. Can't help feeling that would probably disappoint some....

 

Justine - is your friend still working for SS? I considered taking my 'Dipswa' as a career move around twelve or so years ago. Luckily I reconsidered, seeing even then that the average social worker was peeing in the wind. That wind's much much stronger these days, and i think there's a lot more pee about too.

 

L&P

 

BD

Edited June 9, 2010 by baddad

[KezT]

i meant shocking as in what a new, unqualified assistant was expected to do, not in the behaviour of the SW's (generally). and in the attitude that the 15 yr old would have to sort himsellf out/sleep on the streets cos they didn't have an emergency placement. surely that is SS's primary purpose!

[justine1]

I think one other thing you have to consider is the nature of the programme itself. An 'undercover' pretty much sets out to shock and sensationalise and show those being investigated in the worst possible light... By definition you're not going to see an edit that shows the targeted group in any favourable light, because there is no point whatsoever to an undercover report that reveals everything in the garden is rosey. Take that into account, and the fact that the worst they could come up with (outside of showing hugely overworked and underappreciated people being taken advantage of by their employers) was one person moaning that they didn't like doing house calls in dirty houses and an admission of the fairly obvious fact that cutbacks inevitably lead to reduced services and some crative accounting, and it suggests the rot isn't quite as bad as some would like us to believe. Can't help feeling that would probably disappoint some....

 

Justine - is your friend still working for SS? I considered taking my 'Dipswa' as a career move around twelve or so years ago. Luckily I reconsidered, seeing even then that the average social worker was peeing in the wind. That wind's much much stronger these days, and i think there's a lot more pee about too.

 

L&P

 

BD

She is working for SS but....not here she took her qualification and went abroad.Well she had already come from abroad her family are there,funny enough its a third world country and she said some of what she saw here you would never know the difference between here and there!!!!

 

I also thought of social work but I think its a job that "comes home with you" at the end of each day and with four kids that is not ideal for me.

[baddad]

i meant shocking as in what a new, unqualified assistant was expected to do, not in the behaviour of the SW's (generally). and in the attitude that the 15 yr old would have to sort himsellf out/sleep on the streets cos they didn't have an emergency placement. surely that is SS's primary purpose!

 

Hi Kez -

I wasn't suggesting you were 'knocking' SS, just that the programme was intended to. Sorry if there was any confusion over that

 

With the 15 year old, I think it was more her being pragmatic - they didn't have anywhere for him to go and nothing she could do was going to change that. Yes, she sounded world-weary, and yes she sounded unsympathetic, but given that she probably finds herself in those kinds of situations every day i suspect that's how everybody ends up appearing after a while(?)

The other thing to consider was that the boy was known to SS. He wasn't welcome in his own home, he couldn't go on sleeping at his grandads, his last and previous attempts at fostering had 'broken down' and when they found him a place later in a children's home he didn't want to stay there and said he was going to leave. Hostels wouldn't take him because of his history, hotels and B&B's wouldn't take him because of his age (based on hard evidence that children of that age were more likely to destroy their property), and even if they would the fact is that places like that are filled every night with equally needy/deserving cases. That's not in any way to say that those or any other reasons are reasons for ignoring his situation, or for 'blaming' him, but it severely restricts options that were, from the outset, already severely restricted.

And when push came to shove he did go back to grandad's and he was able to find other options through friend, which sounds awful but taking the purely pragmatic point of view wouldn't have happened if SS had had anything else to offer, and in that scenario somebody else would have 'lost' that opportunity who perhaps really didn't have any fallback option...

 

Someone, somewhere along the line said it very simply: If we want better services they have to be paid for. The reality is that people, despite screaming support for the NHS, the welfare system etc aren't actually willing to pay taxes that provide for those things. Social 'ethics', at grass roots level, are probably worse now than they've been in decades (maybe even a century or more), and often it is the very people screaming about the lack of support who are doing most to undermine it. If parents say they won't or can't parent/protect their children, but do everything in their power to stop SS from trying to do so there can only be one outcome - damaged children. And that's not just happening on sink estates it's happening across the board: Whether it is a middle class parent demanding a bigger slice of the pie because it is their children's 'right', or a sink estate mum lying to the benefits agency, the reality is that both are scrabbling for money from what is effectively the same pot, and both are unwilling or unable to accept the compromises needed to make that pot go further or to expand it.

 

The welfare state 'model' was always based on the (actually quite socialist) principle that you put in when you could so you would be supported when you couldn't. That was undermined almost from day one by the cannonball run for free teeth and glasses, but nobody then could have predicted a society with such inequality and/or greed, the swollen numbers of 'have nots' and the growing disparity between them and the comparative wealth of the 'haves'.

 

As Ben Elton used to say when he was pretending to have a social conscience 'Oooh, a little bit of politics there!'

 

As I said earlier... Not a job I could do, 'cos you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. For the most part I think people who train for work in SS probably do so with the best of intentions and ideals, and it's probably the reality of the job rather than personal psychology that works to undermine that.

 

L&P

 

BD

[justine1]

Hi Kez -

I wasn't suggesting you were 'knocking' SS, just that the programme was intended to. Sorry if there was any confusion over that

 

With the 15 year old, I think it was more her being pragmatic - they didn't have anywhere for him to go and nothing she could do was going to change that. Yes, she sounded world-weary, and yes she sounded unsympathetic, but given that she probably finds herself in those kinds of situations every day i suspect that's how everybody ends up appearing after a while(?)

The other thing to consider was that the boy was known to SS. He wasn't welcome in his own home, he couldn't go on sleeping at his grandads, his last and previous attempts at fostering had 'broken down' and when they found him a place later in a children's home he didn't want to stay there and said he was going to leave. Hostels wouldn't take him because of his history, hotels and B&B's wouldn't take him because of his age (based on hard evidence that children of that age were more likely to destroy their property), and even if they would the fact is that places like that are filled every night with equally needy/deserving cases. That's not in any way to say that those or any other reasons are reasons for ignoring his situation, or for 'blaming' him, but it severely restricts options that were, from the outset, already severely restricted.

And when push came to shove he did go back to grandad's and he was able to find other options through friend, which sounds awful but taking the purely pragmatic point of view wouldn't have happened if SS had had anything else to offer, and in that scenario somebody else would have 'lost' that opportunity who perhaps really didn't have any fallback option...

 

Someone, somewhere along the line said it very simply: If we want better services they have to be paid for. The reality is that people, despite screaming support for the NHS, the welfare system etc aren't actually willing to pay taxes that provide for those things. Social 'ethics', at grass roots level, are probably worse now than they've been in decades (maybe even a century or more), and often it is the very people screaming about the lack of support who are doing most to undermine it. If parents say they won't or can't parent/protect their children, but do everything in their power to stop SS from trying to do so there can only be one outcome - damaged children. And that's not just happening on sink estates it's happening across the board: Whether it is a middle class parent demanding a bigger slice of the pie because it is their children's 'right', or a sink estate mum lying to the benefits agency, the reality is that both are scrabbling for money from what is effectively the same pot, and both are unwilling or unable to accept the compromises needed to make that pot go further or to expand it.

 

The welfare state 'model' was always based on the (actually quite socialist) principle that you put in when you could so you would be supported when you couldn't. That was undermined almost from day one by the cannonball run for free teeth and glasses, but nobody then could have predicted a society with such inequality and/or greed, the swollen numbers of 'have nots' and the growing disparity between them and the comparative wealth of the 'haves'.

 

As Ben Elton used to say when he was pretending to have a social conscience 'Oooh, a little bit of politics there!'

 

As I said earlier... Not a job I could do, 'cos you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. For the most part I think people who train for work in SS probably do so with the best of intentions and ideals, and it's probably the reality of the job rather than personal psychology that works to undermine that.

 

L&P

 

BD

Actually SS was the last service to actually government funding.The Beveridge report was for every other thing except SS.I guess in those days people looked after their own more than now anyway,an aunty,grandparent or even a neighbour was always willing to take in the kids that needed care.

You are right though I think people take advantage of the system far too much.I feel when I work I would be happy to pay more for NHS service,and any other service that my family needs,its only fair.It works in other countries.