This article is for Community Care Magazine Social Workers Constantly Live in Fear After scandals like the Baby P and Perrin Barlow cases, social workers have faced a barrage of criticism. But does everyone really understand what they have to deal with on a daily basis? Three different social workers tell us about the fear and stress they face every day as part of a child protection team. “When you are on your way to tell the leader of a violent gang that he can no longer see his children, all you can think is: “I surely should have been trained for this,” says Paul*, a social worker of six years. “I was on my way to the bail hostel to tell my new client that he could no longer have access to his children. I was already a little nervous, the things Iʼd heard about him were disturbing to say the least. Police reports told me to be careful: ʻhe has a history of extreme violence towards social workers.ʼ A colleague had once told me that he has threatened to kill several social workers on numerous occasions and chased one down the street with a knife. I removed his children a few weeks ago; the mother was hooked on heroin and was in no state to look after them. He had fed her heroin just before he was imprisoned, just enough each time so that she wanted more. It was a power thing, that way he could control her while he was away. I had just taken over this job from my former colleague. The last time she tried to remove the manʼs children he rang up the council to find her number and address from the electoral register. Posing as a police officer he rang the number trying to coax her outside to ʻtalkʼ to him, luckily she recognised his voice and locked herself in the house while she waited for the police to arrive. His persistence is probably the worst part.” Paul is not alone. A survey conducted from 600 social workers stated that 50% of social workers dealt with hostile and intimidating parents every week. 68% of those had experienced threats to their person and 26% had experienced threats to their family. And social workers admit they sometimes neglect their responsibilities through fear of what parents might do to them. The amount of case loads piled onto social workers, due to a shortage in the work force, means less time spent with the actual families. The social work bill presented my the BASW (British Association of Social Workers) stated that seven out of ten social workers have been unable to protect a child because of the constraints of the job. 11.3% of social work jobs in England are vacant which means that each social worker has to juggle around 40 cases at one time. This results in neglect of specific children as social workers are spending too much time on paperwork rather than out in the field. Chief Executive of BASW, Hilton Dawson says: “What other profession would tolerate these problems? The way adults and childrenʼs social workers are treated in this country is a national disgrace. It cannot go on any longer and we intend to ensure it wonʼt.” An example of this is the case of Perrin Barlow, a nine-month-old baby who died in 2002 from bronchopneumonia, which may have been triggered by dehydration and malnutrition. The social workers on the case were told that is was a ʻfundamental failureʼ by Plymouth Council to protect Baby Perrin. Despite the coronerʼs report that
Baby Perrinʼs death was because of the councils ʻneglectʼ, Plymouth Council were exonerated. Anne Hollows principal lecturer of social work at Sheffield Hallam University says: “Reviews of child fatalities in general point to features of difficult parental behaviour as being present in almost all cases.” In cases where parents are particularly hostile towards the social worker there is more of a pressing concern for the child. Leigh*, a social worker based in the northeast said: “If a parent is capable of intimidating me, I wonder what that parent must be doing to the child.” In some cases the intimidation gets too much for social workers and they fear for their lives and the lives of their family, resulting in neglect of the child concerned. The sickness rate in social workers was 11.8 days in 2010, which was 60% higher than the national average for all employees. The Freedom of Information requests discovered that on average social workers takes off 12 days a year, and calls in sick around 20 times in one year. These figures emerged after the government attempted to recruit over 5,000 new social workers, however were unsuccessful. The famous case of Baby P, where Peter Connelly aged 17 months was tortured to death in his own home by his motherʼs boyfriend. The authorities were heavily crticised for ʻneglectʼ in the case, having visited Baby P around 60 times before his eventual death. This case has deterred many people from becoming a social worker. Sue Gilmore, the senior social worker involved in Baby Pʼs case described the mother as ʻlovelyʼ and even filmed an interview with her for staff training purposes. In regards to correctly dealing and interviewing hostile parents, Colleen Friend author of Helping Child Welfare Workers Learn Interviewing Skills says: “An interviewer who avoids conflict or becomes overly aligned with parents could run the risk of making a false negative assessment on safety issues, while an interviewer who becomes emotionally engaged with hostile parents could, conversely, make a false positive assessment.” This false positive assessment of Tracey Connelly resulted in neglect of Baby P. Professor Chris Goddard, director of Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia at Monash University, Melbourne creates a direct correlation between hostility towards social workers and behavioural characteristics found in terrorist and hostage literature. In some cases this hostage theory can be literal. Lydia*, 26 she was kidnapped trying to remove some children from a family: “I stood outside the house of a family. I took a deep breath. I was about to tell the family I was going to remove their children. Six months into the job and it never gets easier, but it was best for the children. The father was abusing them, he had a bit of a temper on him. I knocked on the door and was greeted by a large towering figure, he looked at me with disgust. ʻCan I come inʼ I said. He opened the door a little more so I could squeeze in. As I entered the house he closed the door behind me locking it. My heart stopped. He started screaming at me. Telling me if I tried to take his kids he would kill me. I tried to diffuse the situation, telling him to calm down that it wouldnʼt be beneficial to the situation if he kept me locked in the house. After about an hour of talking he finally opened the door and let me out. Nothing prepares you for a situation like that.” Professor Goddard drew a comparison with ʻStockholm Syndromeʼ in which a parent
acts as the terrorist and the social worker adopts defences for self-preservation such as denying the threat or identifying with the aggressor. His report said that often social workers could become ʻhostagesʼ to hostile parents, literally and emotionally. “Previously learned behaviour is lost because of a sense of isolation and powerlessness in a very hostile environment. The worker may adopt defences that are akin to Stockholm in the need for self preservation and relief from severe threat.” He says. Social workers have voiced outrage at the training they received during their social work course. A survey showed 52% of respondents either had no procedures or guidelines to deal with hostile and intimidating parents in their organisation or, if they did, they were not aware of them. The only training social workers receive, is communication training: how to diffuse a situation by reasoning with the aggressive party, or learning where to place themselves in dangerous situations. “The only safe guard that social workers have got is that we visit the houses in pairs or invite the parents to our office, however in most cases they donʼt turn up,” said Paul*. “The police can arrest people and have ways of disarming or defending themselves. What are two social workers going to do against a 6ft gangster threatening to kill us? It is ridiculous we have very little that protects us.” He added. In South Shields, South Tyneside office 13, 10 of the social workers were female and the most hostile of the parents is the father. How is a female social worker expected to deal with an aggressive male intent on killing her? A particularly hostile situation seen in a case in 2006, that involved a young woman who removed the children of a man who was in St Maryʼs Hospital in Gateshead being sectioned. The man reportedly told his psychiatrist in a review that if they let him go he would attempt to ʻstab and killʼ the social worker that removed his children. Despite this statement, the hospital let the man go and needless to say he sought out the social worker and stabbed her putting her in hospital. The women survived the attack, but this should have raised an issue with the council that social workers need better training. This hostility does not only come from the parents. Social workers also face strong criticism from the media. If they remove a child and get it wrong they are lambasted and if they donʼt remove a child and get it wrong they are abused. Social workers can have both positive and negative effects on peopleʼs lives. But, the mistakes that they make carry heavier consequences, which are only amplified by the media. In the NHS, staff operates on a zero-tolerance basis for hostile patients; there should be guidelines for hostile situations for social workers. Social workers are making themselves sick with fear because of hostile parents becoming overly intimidating. Social workers often receive between 20 and 30 phone calls a day from parents either verbally abusing or harassing them about their children. If social workers are in constant fear they are unable to do their job properly resulting in the neglect of the child, the government need to address this issue. With £1.5 billion in cuts from council budgets next year, specifically the section responsible for social care we should expect the problems to get worse before they get better. * All the names in the report have been changed to protect the identity of the individuals.