Society needs help....but does it need Social Services?

 

My Dad's oldest friend (long since dead, sadly) was a chap called George Royle. A first from Cambridge, he was for many years the Head of Social Services in Liverpool. He used to say that the biggest lie of the twentieth century was "I'm your social worker and I'm here to help you".

In the light of recent revelations (both here and elsewhere) in relation to Britain's social care systems, the anecdote is in danger of sounding flip, perhaps even in poor taste. But most of us have long accepted that there are care workers (poorly paid, under-educated and sometimes abusive beyond belief) and social workers - highly educated, better-paid, left-wing on the whole, and often unable to speak anything beyond strangulated cod-psychology English.

Both personally and professionally, I've had occasion to meet and deal with all manner of such social services staff over the last five years. Every last one of them has seemed to me pedantic, process-driven, unable to get beyond cliches, and fiercely protective of their turf. Most of them told me lies (for reasons ranging from a quiet life and budget restraints through to arse-covering) and quite a few of them showed the sort of inflexibility I'd previously only associated with traffic wardens.

But that's just my sample-of-one: what do the professionals think?

Well, GPs accuse them of running from gunfire, as do quite a lot of hospital nurses. But the overwhelming response from all the services with which they interreact is one of 'for God's sake don't involve social services, or we'll be here forever'. Aside from the two groups already outlined, I have been given precisely this response by police, hospital consultants, memory clinics, child-minders, and the private aged-care sector. And as for the charge - often made by social workers themselves - that people saying such things have something to hide - my own experiences and the overall facts to hand simply don't support the accusation.

The track-record of social services in the field of quality control in general (and spotting abusers in particular) is dreadful - be they bad guys in other systemic areas, or the friends and relatives of their clients.

During the period preceding the death of Haringey's Baby P, Sharon Shoesmith was given many ringing declarations of encouragement and praise for her standards - while the DSS itself gave her middle to high scores on providing the necessary services. Throughout Staffordshire during the 1980s, it was human rights lawyers like Richard Wise who blew the whistle on physical and sexual abuse, not the social services. In Plymouth, the Rocking Horse Nursery paedophile ring once again took them entirely by surprise: and in other infamous social work diagnoses, there is evidence that they see abuse where it isn't - as was previously so in Newcastle, Scotland and Blackburn. The nby story featuring Barbara Richards' ghastly life at the hands of these people would be enough to make anyone weep - but it is, trust me, only one among many thousands of others.

While there remain grave doubts about the competence of such people, however, what I want to raise now is another question entirely: 'Competent to do what?' What exactly do they think they should be doing?

Don't waste your time going to the various social services websites - or indeed to the ads they place in various publications inviting job applications: both are completely impenetrable, whether one judges them by known function definition, or simply linguistics.

For example, Barnet social services ('Putting the community first' - where else might a social worker put it?) was at the time of writing advertising a position as Assessment and Enablement Officer. This was the job description:

'In driving the personalisation agenda through direct work with service users, you can have a huge potential impact on them and their carers/families. You will be an initial point of contact who actively engages with people who want to access social work services, conduct individual assessments and facilitate self assessments. Following the enablement approach, you’ll then plan and set up appropriate personalised and outcome-led packages of support that maximise long-term independence and choice and minimise ongoing support and whole life care costs. You will also conduct regular reviews of support plans through structured reassessments, to put in place any necessary revisions.'

This needs no further comment from me, although the drone-clone who wrote it needs to be seriously reprogrammed. Fair enough, I know ads like these are an old target: but after twenty years of universal abuse, have they changed? I suspect the answer is yes - they've got worse.

And herein lies the core of this issue: the profession itself works very hard to make sure that nobody knows exactly what it's working very hard at - and thus quality controllers must employ an equally dense definition of whether they've succeeded or failed in bringing this mysterious goal towards which they are heading any nearer. Sorry, small attack of the social work adverts there.

Today, the only time we find out what they've done wrong is when a Baby P or a Gareth Myatt dies, or two kids jump off a bridge. This is far too late - and, more to the point, not what we should want to know. What we need to ask is 'Are these people doing any good at all?' and 'Is there a better way of ensuring good, humanitarian social care?' In this context, social workers too become a self-perpetuating Establishment: they are unlikely to reinvent themselves, and they certainly won't abolish themselves.

I have a very simple two-part hypothesis based on the evidence to hand and my own experiences. First too many agencies trying to put society right produces endless turf wars - but crucially, somebody else to blame for inaction. The whole approach needs streamlining, and then management by people who can define goals in a more concrete manner than the flim-flam mission statements currently available.

Second - and this is The Big One - I think we need to ask ourselves whether, outside of very clear mental health issues, the State (or official buildings of any kind) are the correct mechanisms and domiciles to use when it comes to 'caring' for vulnerable people. Put another way, by and large social workers get in the way more than they light the way - and once a 'system' is up and running, there are those who will exploit it, as well as others in turn too busy or insensitive to notice what's going on.

I do not doubt that these conclusions will leave me open to yet more accusations of Nazi affiliation. Well, so be it: but if I may dent that argument for one final paragraph, I would include the vast majority of criminals in that definition of 'vulnerable'.

Yes, it's official: I am soft on prisons. The very obvious reasons for this are first, they palpably don't work; and second, they cost a fortune...as the current Home Secretary is currently discovering. Even setting aside the fact that he forgot the soundbite as soon as he'd uttered it, Blair was wrong in 1997 when he did his 'tough on' shtick. There's no point in being tough on crime - once committed, like the tragic social care suicide, it is far too late. The need is for better prevention of crime - via radically rethought social and policing methods. (Not, I might add, by policemen imagining that they too are 'really' social workers).

Some sort of social-problem diagnosis system must and should play a massive part in this prevention process. But I would submit that the current one has been found wanting over and over again. The time has come to look for a radically new approach.

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