Open Letter to Social Workers

[unwavering]

I have often read accounts that children’s services abuse people, manipulate them and contravene basic norms of ethics and respect in order to preserve their own power/protect their careers and avoid oversight and accountability. I have always felt that most people being decent people the truth was probably that things like that while happening from time to time, are rare. My experiences the last few months have led me to wonder if they are so rare after all.

I think that in general power tends to corrupt. There is no greater leverage to have over someone than their children, having that leverage gives you immense power over them - the temptation to abuse that power when it would advantage you to do so must be very hard for people to resist, especially when they are afraid of getting in trouble, or are subject to a set of impossible standards in a kind of double bind/catch 22 in conditions of poor resource provision. It must be incredibly easy to rationalise that one is doing overall more good than ill by protecting ones self in that situation. It must be especially easy to rationalise harms done to “bad people” and people seen as incapable, the first deserve the harms you inflict, had it coming, the second, well their capacity for agency at all is in doubt!

I can understand that, and empathise, I may were I in their shoes feel very tempted to fall into those ethical traps, to justify the harms I was doing, and to believe my abuses were for the greater good. I have certainly made mistakes of that nature in the past. I have behaved badly on many occasions, I have done wrong, yes I have issues to solve and problems to manage - no it’s not acceptable to abuse me, manipulate me, gaslight me, abuse my children, manipulate my children - even if I was Rose West that would not be acceptable. No-one deserves that. You do not deserve that. I do not deserve that. My children do not deserve that. Society does not deserve that. We do not deserve that. If someone is abusing you, whatever the reasons, it is wrong and you have a right to speak out - if your workplace is abusing you, it is wrong and you have a right to speak out. If your workplace is abusing the vulnerable, you not only have a right to speak out, but a duty.

It might make life harder, it may reduce the power you have to manage what is a very difficult job - but ethics are important. It is not something that can be jettisoned for a “win” in child protection, not even against terrible people who deserve it, because the second you jettison ethics you’re not protecting anyone, you are abusing people. You are damaging the fabric of society, trust in its institutions and the vulnerable people that you work with and profess to wish to help including the children themselves. If even a *twinge* of uncertainty crosses your mind that this might apply to you (let alone certainty that it does) it is vital, for your own sake as a human being, for your conscience, for society at large and for everyone you come into contact with that you take a fearless moral inventory of your career, your actions and how you engage with the people you work with across the board, and ask yourself how you can change, how you can repair harms you have already done and how you can avoid doing harm in future. It is vital you take seriously and non-defensively the difficult work of making sense of what social, economic and political factors fed into that, what barriers there are to good ethical practice in your work, what aspects of the culture could be changed, what oversights could be put into place, what broader changes could be made in society - to make it easy to do the right things, and hard to do the wrong ones.

Most people *are* decent people. They want to do the right thing. They feel bad hurting people and feel bad seeing others be hurt. Given the wrong incentive structures, given a lack of scrutiny, put under pressure though? Even the best people can succumb to damaging behaviours. To err is human. Things will only get better if error is confronted non-judgementally and with understanding. Every single person who commits even to simply being more aware of their actions and the contexts in which their behaviours sit, is contributing to making the world a better place. Every single person who evades this hard emotional work is making it worse.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear unwavering,

Thank you for your post. I am not clear from this whether you are asking a specific question or for any advice relating to your situation. If you are looking for this, please do post back again and I will be happy to advise.

Best wishes,

Suzie.