Doing Your Duty

Once again, The Tedious World is lucky to have a guest post from our Tame Social Worker. In an age where websites such as "Name and Shame Your Social Worker" are doing the rounds, I for one think it's vital for the other side of the story to get some airtime, no matter how little.

The curse of any Social Worker on a Duty and Assessment Team is Duty Week. Once upon a time, in the days before budget cuts, there were teams that just did Duty (where you respond to initial concerns about the welfare of children and assess the situation within seven days). Once you had assessed the families, if you decided they needed long term intervention, the case was passed to the appropiate team.

No longer is this the case: our team will have the same family from initial assessment to potential court proceedings and even adoption of children. Technically, one social worker could have the same family on their case load for several years, all the while getting more new cases every three weeks.

Duty week is always a mixture of high energy mixed with deep despair. In an average week we can receive between 15-30 referrals and sorting the wheat from the chaff is difficult and time consuming.

Over the summer holidays, the silly season occurs. My advice to parents would be, don’t have any parties, ensure your children play inside the house or, if you’re lucky enough to have one, your own back garden. And don’t fall out with any of your neighbours (especially if you’re a housing association tenant) - malicious referrals from neighbours and, on occasion, extended family members rise to a ridiculous level during school holidays.

Last duty week saw many such referrals from neighbours claiming their next door neighbour and mother of two young children was a drug addict and prostitute who was also engaging in anti-social behaviour. Upon investigation, it turned out the ‘concerned neighbours’ reporting this were in fact the type you see on those ‘Neighbours From Hell’ programmes on ITV2 who had repeatedly broken into this woman’s house, set fire to her garden and thrown bricks through her window. Thankfully, our intervention will ensure this woman gets to move home.

Then there’s the family who had the audacity to have a birthday party for their 17 year old. When an uninvited guest was ejected from the house and proceeded to rant and rave in the street, the family’s neighbour, who they had long standing issues with, called the Housing Association and the police claiming that the parents were encouraging their underage children to drink alcohol. That’s one family who won’t be having any more parties soon. And finally, there’s the case of the three children playing outside their own home when their football accidentally hit a neighbours car. A quick call to Children’s Services claiming their parents are neglecting them and we show up on the doorstep.

Needless to say, all these cases were closed after Initial Assessment, but it is indicative of the time and resources we waste investigating either trumped up or completely fabricated accusations against parents. Since Baby P, councils are terrified of anything going wrong on their watch, so again and again, Social Workers are sent to investigate every family who we receive a referral about, regardless of whether it appears to be malicious.

Obviously most of the referrals we receive do warrant our investigation, but it bugs me that people who make malicious referrals about their neighbours (and are allowed to remain anonymous) ensure that we can spend time following up false claims to the detriment of spending extra time with families who really need our help.