Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Medicating our children

The medication of our children is a disgrace and needs to be investigated. It is estimated that conservatively, 10% of our children are medicated because they have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). As is the case with all mental health issues there is no blood test, there is no specific way of identifying a mental health disorder. As is the case with ADHD, the only way that it can be diagnosed is by observing the behaviour of the subject.

In the child protection system, there are many children who are traumatised by either the experiences they have had when in the care of their parents or the trauma that is experienced by being removed from their parents. It is understandable that amongst this cohort there will be behaviours which most people would find difficult to manage. It the best way to manage children who behave erratically or who have trouble concentrating is to drug them?

This is wrong at every possible level. When working with adults who have been foster children, and who have also been diagnosed with ADHD, it is evident that it was their behaviour and the need for their foster parents, colluding with the government, to have them medicated so they wouldn't be "a problem". Medication is used as a form of social control, and it needs to be understood that this is the primary reason why children are medicated. It has nothing to do with helping the child to develop better ways of managing their behaviour and dealing with the emotional stress they experience. Rather it is a lazy and abusive way of managing bad behaviour.

It is an inexpensive way, one would imagine, that governments can chemically restrain children rather than finding more appropriate therapeutic techniques to help the child through their current distress.

In my work as a therapeutic counsellor, I often meet up with adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD and have been medicated. In most cases clients will say that the medication was able to calm them down, they were less erratic, and in some cases could concentrate more effectively. What was noticeable that as adults their behaviour was often abusive, they struggled to maintain their relationships. There is no lesson that can be learned from taking medication, particularly as a child when the brain is still developing.

The opportunity for children to learn how to manage their behaviour and understand their emotions is lost once they are on this medication. The most important aspect relating to this medication is that the carer has less work to do and there is a calmer household. Meanwhile, the child is left with the hurt and the pain associated with the trauma associated with their life. The emotions just don't vanish into thin air because one is taking a protein blocker, the reasons why a child may be feeling the way they are and therefore acting in a disruptive manner have never been eradicated, understood or dealt with in any productive way. For years the emotions have been suppressed and when a child grows into adulthood those festering emotions rise to the surface and erupt in the most abusive and violent ways.

I have also noticed that these children, now adults, believe that if this medication was able to help them manage their emotions growing up. Then certainly drugs are a powerful way by which they can manage their emotions as adults. Enter, illicit drug taking. So now the struggle begins, to understand how their experiences have impacted them and what emotions have been suppressed and now need to be released.

We need an inquiry into the use of these drugs on children and whether or not these children use drugs, as adults, to help them suppress the effervescent emotional turmoil which sit inside them. For the sake of our children, we need to understand that the continual use of drugs on children, particularly boys, who are in "care" is an abusive process which denigrates the human soul and sends powerfully negative messages to the child concerning the management of any problem.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

When are we not a Social Worker?

Over many years I have been working on what it means to be a social worker. This blog originally began over 10 years ago as I was endeavouring to solve that particular question. It is now being over 20 years since I graduated from University I can remember at the time being excited about my new profession and what it meant to me personally and professionally. I remember I wanted to learn as much as I could, I want to know how effective I can be as a social worker. I began with an ideal, the belief that I needed to work on two particular constructs, they being nonjudgemental and value free. It didn't take me long to realise that it was not possible to be either of those, but it was possible to understand where our judgements interfered with the work that we do and to realise that I had no idea as to what my values were.

There have always been ethical issues in relation to the work that I do in fact, it is fair to say that there are many ethical issues which occur sometimes on a daily basis. This can be determined by the way, we thank about a client based on how the addressed their weight their employment nonemployment and even the type of car they may drive. The thoughts I entertained in relation to any of these ideas were judgements I was making about these people and in some cases would affect the way I chose to work with them.

For many years I worked for an Employment Assistance Provider (EAP) where most of my clients were middle-class, they on the whole appeared to have relationship problems and on occasions were finding life hard. I don't think there was ever an occasion where I simply chose not to work with them or I dismissed the particular issues, but I did find them tiring and mundane and wondered why they were using a service which was provided to them by their employer and not paying for it themselves when they could afford to do so.

I've never been concerned about the quality of my work, particularly in the latter years after I'd been able to develop my own form of therapeutic practice. I had become more confident as the years progressed in the way I thought about my practice. I can remember when I first began counselling how difficult it was to focus on the client and try to remember what is an appropriate question to ask based on what the client is saying. This was often difficult because I wasn't listening to the client. I was too busy focusing on the next question. I soon learnt that if I relaxed and knew that the question would just come to me I would find the process more helpful for the client. This proved to be the case and it certainly dispensed with the anxiety which came from having to worry about what question to ask.

The question that has remained with me over the years. Once I have been able to sort out who I was as a therapeutic counsellor relates to who I was and have been as a social work. I have often thought that by doing one I was automatically doing the other. I am very good at asking questions, delving into the depths of a person's experiences, but is that enough if we want to be a good social worker? I have a certain skill set, tools if you like, which I can inject into the session and help the client come to realisations which are new and challenging. But again, does that make me a good social worker? These are tools that anyone can acquire regardless of the training and can appear to be significant and unique to a particular profession, but they are still tools. Anyone, using these tools could be a counsellor, but does that make them a social worker?

The question that concerns me is when are we not a social worker? If I am a mechanic I am a mechanic as long as I'm fixing something mechanical. As a mechanic I go home, I speak to my partner, I play with the kids. I'm not necessarily a mechanic while at home, unless I am fixing something. So am I a social worker when I am in front of the client and something else when I am at home? So as a social worker someone who just has a set of tools and uses them for the purpose of interpersonal discovery? If a mechanic makes a mistake while fixing a customer's car who holds him responsible for that mistake? If the mistake is fatal, the customer can hold the mechanic accountable for the damage caused by his or her mistake. Each of us then are obligated to ensure that all our work leaves the customer or client safe.


Social work is a value laden profession, unlike any other profession. There are a set of values which inherently determine how a social worker should conduct his or her practice. The question that this tends to create is kind of like the question I posed earlier which is when are we not "practising"? Speaking from a position of personal knowledge, I know that in is possible to be dragged before the social work ethics committee based on a private text message. Putting this personal experience aside, I have always believed that our behaviour, under all circumstances, should reflect who we are professionally. My personal experience validates my long held view.


Who, in the public, are aware of the standards expected of a practising social work? Do people believe that those standards should be enacted at all times and under all circumstances? I am unable to say if I know the answers to any of these questions, what I can do is make assumptions about how people may think social workers should behave. What I hear from clients is probably an indicator as to the standard expected from social workers.

The people I work with want to be heard and understood. That they are not heard and not understood indicates that the social worker is failing to perform a primary function of any social worker, and that is to engage with the client so that a relationship can be established which benefits those involved. Regardless of the type of work that a social worker engages in, this is an integral part of being an effective social work. Failing at this basic level is an indicator that the social worker should not be doing social work or is poorly supervised and hasn't been corrected in relation to client engagement. You will never be an effective social worker if the people you're working with don't like working with you.

There are two important elements in relation to the commitment and aims of social work as defined in the Australian Association of Social Work "Code of Ethics." "Working with and supporting people to achieve the best possible levels of personal and social well-being, working to address and redress inequity and injustice affecting the lives of clients, client groups and socially disadvantaged." p7
It is clear as to what our purpose is and how we should be working with our clients and beyond that how we should be behaving in the general community.

In answer to the question when are we not a social worker, the answer is simple. There is not a time when we should not be practising the principles which inform the work we do. We can't advocate for justice and fairness, when we are not just and fair in our personal lives. It is a contradiction to have one set of values for one aspect of our lives and another set of principles in other parts of our lives. Being a social worker is just about "being".