The link is to another article essentially confirming the thesis propounded by Sue White, Allan Norman and myself
First para:
Having spent almost 20 years working in residential child care I now teach social work. I was horrified (although sadly not altogether surprised) when a student reported back from a field visit that she had been told by a children and families social worker, ‘we don’t do relationships anymore”. It wasn’t even said with regret apparently, just a statement of what the social work role had become. In fact it seemed to the student that there appeared to be an almost ‘macho’ element in the assertion ‘ ‘forget that namby-pamby stuff they teach you in University, this is the real world’. In this ‘real world’ social workers spend most of their day policing and processing families from a distance. They rarely see them anymore but are quick to send letters telling them that they have ‘failed’ the appointment made for them in the social work office, now relocated, off the beaten track, away from where people actually live. In this new office social workers spend their days plugging information about a family’s failed appointments, into a software package developed for a business environment. This amassed information can then be used to establish the pattern of non-compliance necessary to justify ‘heavier’ interventions or to be called upon to show that they had ‘done the work’ or at least left a paper trail. Welcome to the world of real social work...
First para:
Having spent almost 20 years working in residential child care I now teach social work. I was horrified (although sadly not altogether surprised) when a student reported back from a field visit that she had been told by a children and families social worker, ‘we don’t do relationships anymore”. It wasn’t even said with regret apparently, just a statement of what the social work role had become. In fact it seemed to the student that there appeared to be an almost ‘macho’ element in the assertion ‘ ‘forget that namby-pamby stuff they teach you in University, this is the real world’. In this ‘real world’ social workers spend most of their day policing and processing families from a distance. They rarely see them anymore but are quick to send letters telling them that they have ‘failed’ the appointment made for them in the social work office, now relocated, off the beaten track, away from where people actually live. In this new office social workers spend their days plugging information about a family’s failed appointments, into a software package developed for a business environment. This amassed information can then be used to establish the pattern of non-compliance necessary to justify ‘heavier’ interventions or to be called upon to show that they had ‘done the work’ or at least left a paper trail. Welcome to the world of real social work...
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