That's fucking stupid

I had the misfortune to have to listen to LBC last night while running my hands over an oily teenage girl and was amused at their response to this “story”.

The presenter, whose name I have thankfully repressed, kept going on and on about how this was a knee jerk reaction to (and she kept mentioning it over and over again) the tragic but statistically insignificant Baby P incident. Her logic was that social workers are so scared not to be seen to be ticking boxes that they now investigate everything and have accused this woman of being a poor parent without any reason.

Now let’s just dissect that a little bit at a time eh?

1. It was a police officer who made the referral; social services have to, quite rightly, check out every referral. If anyone was unnecessarily arse-covering it was the copper and not the social workers.
2. The papers do not give an even two sided view of the story so we can’t judge if this was justified or not. There may have been other factors which raised concern such that the police officer thought it prudent to refer the issue.
3. A social services referral is not a judgement, it’s an offer of help. I have had the good fortune to see social work from both sides of the fence and their primary goal is to offer support and assistance and taking kids away is an absolute last resort where the safety of the kid is in danger. Working with them will almost always bring positive results.
4. If there is any arse-covering culture it’s because there is a media witch hunt going on at the moment. Social workers (along with doctors, nurses, policemen and everyone else) make mistakes. They don’t always fix everyone but in general they do their best, and those who don’t do their best or who are malicious are weeded out. This means that sometimes people die on operating theatre tables because the doctor fucked up, sometimes people are arrested because the policeman made a mistake and sometimes kids get abused because social services fail to spot the signs. Oh, and sometimes the well meaning Prime Minister will make some spelling errors on a note he grabs a minute to write to a grieving mother. THAT’S ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE ARE ONLY FUCKING HUMANS. Tearing them to shreds and destroying their career for the one or two fuckups they make in a really difficult job is not going to help anyone in the long term, is it? Is it, Mr Tabloid hack? Yes, I am looking at you.

Can we start burning newspaper journalists on a giant flaming stake every time one of them makes a spelling, grammatical or factual error in an article? Stuff like that can have tragic results too.

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