The Social Worker and Society

On Watch Over Vulnerable Children?

For those countries where social work has become a norm, the work of the social worker tends to be located in what is called social services, as it is in Britain or the United Kingdom. The social worker’s role is to help to provide a range of preventative and supportive family-orientated services to children and families, as well as to vulnerable adults who, due to the type and/or extent of their ascertainable needs, are assessed to have a legal entitlement to one or more of those services.

The roles and responsibilities of the social worker, in a ‘modern’ society, can be very wide and problematic. For example, the social work profession has to contend with some perennial issues.  Such as how to determine who is eligible for receiving the services they provide, how to prioritise and re-prioritise who should get the available services when the demands outstrip the provision and delivery of the service, and how does it deal with accountability issues when problems occur, either because of service short-falls, such as insufficient staffing or inadequate training.

In Britain, the emphasis or focus of social worker interventions tend to change according to which government is in power, but with all governments professing their adherence to the same outcome, namely that of their commitment to ensuring the effective safeguarding of vulnerable children and their families.  

his ‘duty to protect and safeguard the welfare of the child’, is seen as the paramount guiding principle of all professionals working with children; what is call ‘TAC’, or the team around the child. This team, at any given stage of the child’s life could comprise different professionals, including parents, other family or alternative carers of the child, midwives, health visitors, teachers, nursery staff, social workers, foster carers, doctors and nurses, psychologists, et al.

Whichever government – or political party – is in power, they all tend to struggle with a number of persistent variables. These include how to fund social services adequately; what strategy/ies to follow, e.g., focus on preventative services or child protection services, or permanence services, such as removing children who have suffered significant harm from their parents and place them permanently with alternative carers. 

Because of the time lag factor in arranging for and implementing changes, it is often the case that, before one government policy can be fully implemented, the policy has changed or other policies come into play, which can lead to a lack of clarity on the part of the people tasked with implementing the policies and safeguarding the children.

Government strategies for working with vulnerable children and their families, tend to be focused on one or more of three areas. The first option is to have the relevant practitioners to work with struggling families who, for various reasons, have been been assessed as failing to safeguard and protect their children, and to enable them to remain with or be returned to such families. The second option is to determine when it is appropriate and better to remove the children who have suffered or is assessed as being at imminent risk of suffering  such harm, and place them with suitable alternative carers in the family, probably through Guardianship Orders. The third option is to efficiently remove vulnerable children from abusive carers and secure permanency for them, by placing them with alternative family carers, such as long-term foster carers and prospective adoptors?

Just like the government, local authorities struggle to decide how to allocate their budget to different services, in the attempt to meet government performance targets.  If the government wants children to be returned to their families, then it could mean more emphasis being given to working with vulnerable families under child protection measures, something which could see the same child or children being subjected to a child protection plan on more than one occasion. 

Or it might mean placing them within the children’s extended families, probably with their new carer becoming a legal guardian – this option can come with some significant risks or concerns, since members of the extended families might also struggle with their children – for the child. 

Alternatively, if the government wishes to secure ‘permanence’ for the vulnerable child, the local authority would have to put sufficient resources into recruiting long-term foster carers who would also consider becoming the child’s legal guardian, and prospective adoptors, so that the child can be placed and has its future determined by the court, if necessary, within a period of under a year of the care proceedings being initiated.

The social worker, although not being the most powerful – that position is usually assumed by the court appointed Child’s Guardian, for the duration of the proceedings – is the kingpin in the accountability chain surrounding the vulnerable child for whom he/she is responsible.

It is the social worker’s role and responsibility to ensure the protection and safeguarding of the child. This is normally done  through the social worker visiting, assessing, liaising with relevant agencies, and ensuring the provision and successful implementation of an appropriate service, child protection or care plan for each child on his/her caseload. 

The strategy of protecting and safeguarding protection vulnerable children by way of allowing to remain in the care of the people whose care of them is the basis of the harm and/or risk the need to be protected from, is a complex and risky process, irrespective of how well one tries to manage the identified risks.

However, in the comparatively rare occasions when the child suffers further major significant harm, the social worker can expect to have all of his/her actions scrutinized with the clarity of hindsight, and events which have become know but were unknown or not predictable or predicted before the tragedy. 

This makes the job of being a social worker very onerous, notwithstanding the sense of satisfaction some social workers derive from making a positive difference in the lives of vulnerable children and their families.

OWOHROD