Colin Turner: The vital role played by social workers

Note: Here's some British BS for you all to chew on.

Colin Turner: The vital role played by social workers

Vilified over Baby P and other failings, social workers are under scrutiny like never before. So why would anyone do it? Here, Colin Turner, who returned to the profession after a high-profile role elsewhere, explains why he came back to the job he loves.

Now, I'm not going to get into what kind of person would want to be a babystealer, because that would be redundant at this point. What interested me about this article is this...

The reality is that there are literally hundreds of untold success stories where social workers have made a positive impact on the lives of children and families – but of course these don’t make news stories and I guess it’s right that they don’t.

These are private to the children and families and should be kept that way.

Nevertheless, I still find it interesting that when a lifeguard saves a child from drowning it makes the front page of the local newspaper, but when a social worker rescues a child from abuse or neglect, it is never reported.

Make a mistake, however, and social workers are vilified. They’re criticised for interfering in family life and criticised when they don’t. It’s not easy.

This is a restatement of a common argument that babystealers use when justifying their existence. A restatement of the "damned if you do / damned if you don't" mentality.

The argument centers around the belief that social workers in the field of child protection do good work that goes unrewarded but when they make a mistake, the consequences are great as the media only reports on the bad. This, although it should be no surprise coming from the mouth of a child protection worker, is a bold faced-flat out lie as there is all kind of media attention aimed at the "good" these people do. Enough, in fact, that the Child Protective Industry receives overwhelming support from most of society as there is still the belief that these people only seek to protect children from abuse or neglect instead of using them to grow a thriving business and provide a better product for the forced adoption industry.