FionaK |
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| This dilemma is real and it arises from the drift in the value base of my job.
It happens that there are a number of young women who have children to men who are considered to be dangerous for one reason or another.
The situation with the men is quite simple: if they commit an offence they are arrested (ideally), charged, tried, and if convicted they are sentenced. So far, so good. They serve the sentence and they are free.
The situation with the women is not so simple nowadays. Although the man is now free, he is considered to be a danger to children, let us say. That is not a legal concept: it is common sense, or it is prejudice, depending on your point of view. But the young woman loves this man. Or she is scared of him. Or for some other reason she decides to start or continue a relationship with him.
What now?
The primary responsiblity of my job is to ensure the safety and welfare of children. Fair enough. That is always going to be difficult and I accept that.
But here is the rub: the department I last worked in has decided to handle this situation in a particular way: that is, they "assess" the ability of the woman to protect her children: and if they are not convinced she will make sure this guy is not around in circumstances where he might hurt the children or hurt her where the children will see it, then they put the children on the child protection register. Which means that the woman gets all kinds of grief.
Oddly there are a number of such women who do not see this as helpful: in fact they see it as damn intrusive and they do not accept it is legitimate. So they tell us lies. The fact that they tell us lies is seen as further proof that they are not able to protect, and so we keep on interfering with their lives, by keeping the children on the register.
This is catch 22 for these women. It is based on a lie we do nothing to dispel: the child protection register does not give us any power at all. It is voluntary: but most of them don't know that. How could they, when the self same legislation which establishes the register lays statutory obligations on social workers about how often to visit and what meetings to have? That it does not give us any power at all to carry out those statutory obligations is not immediately obvious to the subjects of the system. Nor indeed to many social workers.
What they should do is tell us to get lost: in most cases we don't have anything that will stand in court cos nothing has happened. Sometimes we do have evidence and in that case we should use it. But when we don't what justification can there be for giving these women a hard time? They are not the problem: the man is.
I think they are easier to bully, really. I don't feel ok about this and in fact it is one of many reasons I don't feel right about doing this job any more
But it is true that often such men do hurt children and maybe that is the overriding consideraton: if it is, why not lock the men up or something? Oh, that is right: they served their sentence and they have rights.
What do you think is a better answer? cos this sucks
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