Kim’s Story–the beginning

Following from my last post I have had a number of people enquire about the historical events which have brought us to where we are today. Kim was referred to me by a colleague who wasn’t able to continue the work. When I first met Kim she was a shy, guilt-ridden woman whose self esteem was so low that she found it difficult engaging in conversation. She found it difficult looking me in the eye. She had witnessed domestic violence when she was a child and had been made to feel responsible for her mother and younger brother. Kim came to me with some very dark writings and drawings which indicated that she was not in a very healthy position mentally.

She had contacted FamiliesSA because she was suffering from Post Natal Depression and was finding it difficult coping with her newly born daughter so in her effort to keep her daughter safe she sought help from a department she believed was suppose to offer her support. She was offered some assistance in terms of a live-in program for mothers who are struggling. The child was eventually returned to her and her partner but their daughter was a very restless child who needed Kim’s constant care and attention. There is no disputing that Kim was able to provide this but what has happened by now is that the department had identified this child as being a child at risk.

I have read the court documents around this case many times and it is difficult to identify what eventually brought about the second removal of their daughter. Some of this story is quite complicated but what is important is that during the first twelve months of the initial order Kim had made significant changes in her life. I have worked as a therapeutic counsellor for many years and rarely have I found someone who was able to make the changes evidenced by Kim. Social Workers failed to see any of these changes.

The Kim I first met is not the same person I experience today. There is still a long way to go for Kim but she now has a determination and sense of purpose. The loss of her daughter has caused her immeasurable distress but Kim has been able to find a way to work through all the demons which accompany such emotional pain. Regardless of the negative and unhelpful statements made about her by Families SA and others she is able to continue the fight. Together, Kim and Shane have been able to redefine themselves and construct a new meaning in their relationship and a wonderful resilience which would put most of us to shame.

I can remember when my children were removed from me by their mother and the depth of pain I felt at that time. I cried every night for six months. I didn’t have physical contact with them for many years. Perhaps I was able to reconcile this because I was the cause of the relationship breakup and my children were with their mother. I don’t know how I would respond if there was not reason that my children were taken away and that I had done all that I could to have them returned to me. I certainly wasn’t as powerless as Kim and Shane. I didn’t have a whole legal department working against me. I didn’t have a series of government workers parading a range of theories and confusing language which was beyond my comprehension.

I am so angry at those people who practice a bastardised version of Social Work which embodies the antithesis of what I believe. I find it hard to believe that a group of professionals couldn’t see that this woman and her partner were working hard to improve their circumstances and when they did so they were further punished. It is unjust that a person such as Kim can travel so far and then not be rewarded.

Within two years most of these Social Workers and Psychologists would have left he department. By the time this child is 18 none of them will be present to welcome her back to her mother and father. None will be present to take responsibility for any of the potential damage they may have caused. Who is going to be around to say that “we got it wrong concerning the attachment therapy stuff”? Kim and Shane are going to be there. Who is going to be there over the years to care for this child’s needs – the aging carers – probably not – the department – definitely not – her parents – if they are allowed?

Why can’t we make the next 13 years of this child’s life the best they can be by having her grow up with the people who love her the most? What makes this so hard to understand and comprehend particularly when her parents are going to provide her with a caring and nurturing environment?

Kim’s Story–Child Protection gone mad

Some time ago I posted on YouTube a video called “Kims Story” which you can find here. This is a client whose case represents all that is wrong with child protection. I have been working with Kim and her partner for two years. In this time her daughter has been placed under the Guardianship of the Minister until she is eighteen. The child is three and a half and is placed in relative care with her grandfather and his partner.

It perhaps is rather naive of me to believe that injustice can be righted and that reasonable people will be able recognise when a gross injustice has been done. I now believe that within the child protection lurks a group of people who are so tainted by “the system” that they wouldn’t comprehend justice and fairness if it smacked them in the face. They are so embedded in the belief that when a child has been placed under a GOM18 order that this is the way the situation has to remain no matter how the parents change. The parents could be exemplary parents, saints in fact, canonised even, and the gatekeepers of this system would not be able to recognised the changes the parents had made.

The holy grail is the undying belief in attachment theory and what that represents in turns of the child’s future development. It is unfortunate that the Youth Court buys into this belief system. I found myself asking what action would be left to child protection workers if there was no such thing as attachment theory. It looks like “The Kings New Clothes”. Perhaps my task in life is to yell from the side lines, “the king isn’t wearing any clothes!” At this point I am not going to explain attachment theory but am going to talk about the situation which brought us to a meeting yesterday and which produced one of the worst professional days of my life.

I firmly believe that the changes Kim and Shane have made are so significant that they no longer met the original concerns of the department. In the original court order the Youth Court had set aside some notes which was designed by the crown solicitor to placate Kim and Shane by enticing them with an additional note on the order and which paves the way for further access and over night visits providing the department makes the appropriate assessment. The parents have been having unsupervised access once a week for over a year. It is clear from the original order and the type of access they were granted that the department didn’t have any major care concerns. It is important to note that the parents, particularly Kim, didn’t have a very complimentary report by the social worker and psychologist at the time of the original GOM 18 order. However they were granted these special conditions. Things have changed dramatically since. (Even though the original assessment had major flaws).

I have had a number of meetings with the CEO of Families SA advocating for Kim and not receiving any support what-so-ever. Clearly he and his senior staff have no power or they are just plain ignorant. I can’t even tell you how angry I am at him. They did agree to have a Psychologist report compiled to assess overnight access. Talk about being blindsided. This has to be the biggest betrayal I have ever experienced in my life.

Knowing the changes that Kim and Shane have made in their lives I believed a favourable report would be delivered. At the meeting on Monday the psychologist presented a range of platitudes which lacked meaning and could have been recited by a vending machine with more feeling. However she did compliment Kim and Shane on the progress they had made and she wasn’t critical of their parenting; in fact she noticed that Kim was particularly attentive of her daughter. Shit, I could have told them that.

Then came the slam dunk. Kim and Shane were criticised for having a bed set up for their daughter with her toys on it and told that they should get some grief counselling for the fact that they will not be getting their daughter back. If I had lost a child through death and I wanted to keep her room as a reminder of what she means to me and that was my way of managing my emotional pain then don’t ever tell me that I need to find a way to get over it. How insulting is that. This psychologist had no idea what this room meant to Kim and if she had an ounce of empathy would have kept her thoughts to herself.

There was also the time that Kim was told that her daughter didn’t love her. That did it. Kim broke down in tears and had to leave the room. Was that really necessary and what was the context in which it was said? Was it a comment prompted by the psychologist's unconscious thoughts and biased agenda?

Then came the final slam dunk. The recommendations were that because the child was in relative care and had a strong attachment to the step grandmother then it would be disruptive and interfere with her attachment and damage her forever, my take on it. I would love to have their crystal ball. The parents were only now allowed to have fortnightly supervised access for two hours.

We had asked for access over night and particularly this Christmas and because of this request have now gone so far backwards and against the original intent of the court order. However they are a law unto their own.

The next bit you are going to love. A week ago I met Kim’s brother who has been severely damaged by the brutality of his father, the man who now cares for Kim’s daughter. Her brother tells the story that when he was five he could hear a fight taking place in his parent's bedroom and his mother screaming for help. He burst into the room to find his father with his hands around his mother's throat. His mother's eyes were rolling back into her head and she was changing colour. This five year old boy threw himself onto his father at which point his father flung him against the wall. However, this was enough though for the father to stop strangling his wife. According to the department they know about this man's violence and it is just something from the past and therefore is not a concern to them. I know from other stories that this man's potential for violence is still real.

I would like anyone reading this to contact the Minister at the following address and register your shock at this level of injustice. If we can muster enough support I am sure the Minister will step in and review this case in an independent manner and hopefully find a way to change a system which fails to conform to social work standards. If she doesn’t act then perhaps we can all shout “look there is the minister without any clothes.” minister.rankine@saugov.sa.gov.au .

Working with families

It is important that we understand that working with families is vital to the wellbeing of children. I understand that there are times when children need to be removed from families where they are being abused and I can understand that there are some parents who are unable to change for the sake of their children’s well being. Most parents are distressed at the removal of their children and most families want to make some changes. My experience tells me that the timeline given to implement change by Families SA is often too short and fails to consider the complex nature of the parents problems. Where drugs and violence are involved and particularly where there is generational abuse the change is going to be lengthy and the engagement with a parent will be vital to the overall outcome. I am convinced that if child protection workers could understand these complexities and commit themselves to working with the parent then there would be better outcomes for all.

Kids want to remain with their parents. Even in the most violent and dysfunctional families children want to remain in the environment in which they know even though it may be damaging for them. The role of Social Workers is to evaluate the impact the environment is having on the child and the potential for change of the parent/s. Some time last year I was at a meeting at Families SA and as I left the office I noticed a young women in tears being comforted by her partner. I engaged in a conversation with her and discovered that he children had been recently removed from her. She was devastated and feeling very helpless and hopeless about the situation. She didn’t know where to turn. She had no sense of hope or even understanding as to what she and her partner needed to do in order to have her children returned to her. I wondered about the intervention that had been put in place and whether the Social Worker’s had provided and accurate assessment of her and even considered the potential for change in her.

We had a meeting in my office a week later and I discovered some encouraging and valuable strengths this woman and her partner had. They are both intelligent and vibrant individuals. She had an horrific childhood where she experienced every form of abuse you could imagine at the hands of her mothers partners and finally when she was thirteen by the system her children now found themselves a part off. When I heard her story, which took about an hour, it became evident that this woman was prepared to make changes including a partner who was non-violent. I could not understand why the Social Workers could not see what I saw. I have come to understand that we practice a different version of Social Work. I have also come to understand that the skill set required to provide accurate assessments of clients is limited by many of the Child Protection Social Workers I encounter. They lack counselling skills, questioning skills, evaluation skills, negotiating skills, empathy and the ability to evaluate and acknowledge a persons strengths and to find ways to build on them.

Eventually, through some strong advocacy work and a new Social Worker, who had some of these skills, we were able to negotiate appropriate ways of working with the client. What became evident was that once the social worker became aware of the potential that existed with this couple the more dedicated the social worker became regarding working towards reunification. The children have been returned to their parents. Had the department remained in a negative and unhelpful frame of mind the antagonism which the couple felt and the resistance they displayed towards the department would have interfered with any attempt to reunify the family.

There are many families who don’t have the opportunity to be reunified because the Social Worker fails to work from a strengths based approach. So many opportunities are missed and so many families are not afforded the opportunity to change so that their children can have the life with their families that they disserve. 

Child Protection and the system which protects it

There is a fabulous article in the UK Telegraph which says all that needs to be said about child protection and the system which protects it from scrutiny. Read the article here. I read many articles from around the world which talk about child protection always in the same way. There is a universal way of viewing child protection and very little of it is good. The article mentioned here could have been written about any child protection system in Australia. It fascinates me that the very system which is so talked about and the emotive nature of child protection has become so protected and so unjust and inequitable that it belies the very scrutiny it receives.

In order for the government to protect their system they must appear to be active and vigilant against those parents who do abuse their children. As in the recent prosecution of the six parents who abused their children it becomes evident that this was more about being seen to be active and vigilant and to give the impression that there are horrific cases of abuse and that the government is on the ball and taking firm action. A case such as this and other cases where parents are abusing children should not pursued us that the system is working. It goes without saying, but I will say it again, that we need to protect children from harm. I know from personal involvement with the case mentioned above that the system will not be able to provide these damaged children the care they are going to need to overcome the abuse they have suffered ,as it was not able to help the adults when they were children to overcome the abuse they experienced. And so the cycle continues.

I have worked with a client whose son was sexually abused while in care. The abuser was arrested but not charged because the child was too young to give evidence even though child pornography was discovered on the abusers computer. To what extent is the government culpable for placing a child at risk? An apology was eventually offered as a result of my advocacy work, but I am sure the department would have pushed this under the carpet had it not been for my involvement.

The problem seems to be that the department doesn’t hold itself up for scrutiny. I know that there is a culture which propagates inadequacy whereby social workers and others object to a critical eye being cast over their practice. They object to being critiqued probably for fear that they may have their weaknesses revealed. It has always seemed hypocritical that the very organisation which has a “Big Brother” view of clients is fearful of the same gazed cast upon them. When ever I have a meeting or phone call with a social worker from FSA they have been told to have another worker to note what has been said. Now what is that all about? Not that I object all that much but do I have the luxury of having someone standing by who can sit with me when I have a conversation with them? Who sits with clients when they are at meetings and elsewhere? Before FSA turn up on your door step do they warn you that they are coming and suggest that you have someone present with you, taking notes for future reference?  I can tell you from personal experience that they do not like someone else turning up with a client, certainly if it is a professional.

I wonder how FSA look at what they do and to what extent do they retrain staff who are not performing appropriately. Who even knows what appropriate is? What is the standard of service because it certainly isn’t what is written in the Child Protection Manual?

I am hoping that the good Social Workers who work in the department will one day all band together and stop the practices which disadvantage and disempower people. I am hoping that one day the good Social Workers will critique colleagues who behave badly and report them for mal-practice. I am hopeful that the Social Workers who work for FSA realise that they have the best job in the world if they practiced according to Social Work principles. It isn’t all that hard, unless you are feeling as vulnerable as the clients you are suppose to help.

Child Protection and long term orders

Currently I am working with a client whose child is under the guardianship of the Minister to the age of eighteen. This is an important case because it represents all that is unhelpful about Child Protection decision making and the long term care of children. We had applied for legal aid and were hopeful that once this was granted there would be a pathway to have the order varied. The lawyer contacted me and informed me that the only pathway would have been to have challenged the order within twenty one days of it being granted. To apply to the supreme court to have this challenged would have cost $2,000 for the application alone. When unemployed and at he lowest end of the socio-economic pile who has the money to seek such an application? That is just the application fee. Legal aid wont fund the actual court proceedings. The reality is that very few people, if any, can afford to challenge the legal system and child protection services once their child has been removed and a long term order is in place.

But it becomes more complicated and unjust than what I have mentioned. There is virtually no way that a parent can change an order, regardless of how much they have reached sainthood. However I am told that the Department is able to seek variations to orders and do this regularly. They can return to the court and change aspects of an order at a whim particularly if they believe the current order is not in the best interest of he child. They do not, and refuse to, change orders if the parent has changed his or her lifestyle and is even able to provide a better home than the one the child is currently living. It often appears that the department believes that in all circumstances they are the better parent. We all know that that isn’t the case.

How have we allowed a system to develop which is clearly inequitable. Are they afraid that if everyone had access to an appeal process that the department would be held accountable for the decisions they make. The department will argue that the parent has many opportunities to prove that they can parent differently and to some extent that is true but often the time frame for this is too small and the decision makers become too entrenched in their decision that they refuse to offer appropriate pathways towards re-unification. In my clients case this is what happened.

I admit that this is relatively new territory for me but I found it interesting that when I contacted the department and presented them with the legal interpretation I had been given the person I spoke to wasn’t certain as to the exact process either and suggested that I contact the clerk of the court to find out. If a senior Social Worker in the department cant be definitive about the legal ramifications and requirements then we have to wonder why we would expect front line staff to know either.

What this means for practice is that Social Workers are obligated to inform their clients of the implications of the workers actions. That includes the legal ramifications of the decisions of the court and the appeal process. Me client told me that if she had known this she would have responded differently to the court process in the beginning and challenged the GOM 18 order more vehemently. If I had known what I know now I would have have talked to her about these issues and also asked the social workers concerned why they weren’t talking to the client about the ramifications for the client and child.

When I hear Social Workers tell parents that even though the department are seeking a GOM 18 the client can still return to court I want to vomit. It is a gross misrepresentation of the actual situation, in fact it is a lie, either based on ignorance or just plain guilt. I wonder if Child Protection workers really understand the implications of their decisions and the long term impact this has on the parents and more importantly the child.

The client I am referring to here lives in a neat and very tidy home. Has great parenting skills. Is applying for university next year. Is very intelligent. No longer self harms. Has improved her mental health to the point one could argue it is no longer problematic. But under the current system no matter what she changes she will never be able to get her daughter back in her care. In fact the department thinks the child is better in a family where corporal punishment is the norm, leaving the child in the care of others for days on end is okay, and that the carers are aging and not able to provide the same care as her mother, is all in the best interest of the child.

The department is able to return to court and vary the order but are unwilling to do so. The client told me that she doesn’t care if the department remain involved she just wants her daughter back. But they don’t get it and I am left wondering, why? I sense that some of the people from the department, who have met my client, since I have been advocating for her, also are wondering what is going on here. But no one has the guts to challenge their workers decisions in the first instance, and more importantly no one has the guts to act in what is in the best interest of the child. 

I have worked with some fantastic social workers at Families SA. It distresses me that the decision making process, which ultimately changes peoples lives for ever, is allowed to be made by inexperienced unequipped Social Workers. I know if some of these more experienced and capable Social Workers had been given this case that there would have been a different outcome. 

Response to Jeremy Summut and Child Protection

I was listening to Jeremy Summut talk about child protection on radio national tonight and then searched for more information on the man and other things he may have said about the subject. He seems to have easy access to the ABC so they obviously regard him as somewhat of an expert on the subject. One of his entries on the ABC.

His statements on the whole are unhelpful because he seems to lose sight of the fundamental problem. Summut believes that the Child Protection Services are more interested in preserving the families than they are in protecting children from harm. My work with Families SA has proved to be a little different from that. On the whole the focus is definitely on what is in the best interest of the child, well that is the mantra presented at most meetings with Social Workers. I certainly support that notion, and I don’t think anyone would dare to suggest anything different.

What Summut and others fail to talk about is the decision making process and the experience of those making the decisions. Then there is the supervisory support offered those making the decisions and the way the supervision of social workers and psychologists is conducted. Then there is the one I love and that is that none of these people are accountable to anyone. They are professionals but most of them, particularly social workers are not compelled to belong to their peak body, the AASW. They are shielded by their organisation and only answerable to people who support the negative aspects of the work they do.

If Mr Summut wants the system to change then he needs to understand more about the profession which underpins the problem, Social Work. Social Work has a specific way of critical analyses which incorporates a more systemic view of the world and which takes into account all the facets of a person’s life. The balancing act between what is in the best interest of the child and the parents propensity for change cannot be ignored but in many cases is not even considered. As a Social Worker I have seen many parents change as a result of the intervention of social workers at Families SA, now that has definitely been in the best interest of the children. I have also seen parents change and the changes not even recognised by the Social Workers. Inconsistency is another issue. The inability to have consistent protocols and values is appalling and puts more children and their families at risk than anything else.

Then there is my pet problem which seems to be ignored by Mr Summut and that is societies failure to understand that if we are not able to change the parent then they will continue to have more children who will become GOM kids. So while Mr Summut dismisses parents as being important perhaps he could calculate for us all the cost benefit if we worked with every family who have multiple children in government care and what we could save if 50% of those families found better ways of parenting after their first child was removed. The problem Mr Summut is that we give up on them too easily, just like you. That we don’t cherish the family and what it represents in all its forms. I know that when we work with the family productively we have great outcomes. What we need to do is find ways to engage and understand the systemic problems which have brought the children into the gaze of the Minister in the first place.

Child protection is all about protecting children from harm. It is also about demonstrating better ways of engagement with parents so that we can develop partnerships which work towards change. I certainly don’t have an issue where it is evident that parents are not able to change at this stage. I have a problem where unrealistic goals are set in a short period of time and parents are set up to fail.

Summut’s response to this problem is too simplistic and way left of centre. It is narrow and regardless of the research he says he has done it is tainted with a narrow view of the problem.

Who notices what you do?

I have often thought about the loneliness of the work we do. In my world everyday I am confronted by the sad stories of my clients. They come to me because they want help. Whatever that looks like. I listen and try as best as is possible to understand what they have experienced. For the hour they spend with me I focus exclusively on their experiences and the emotional pain many of these experiences have caused them. Clients express all the range of emotions you can imagine during that hour. Some leave relieved that they have been able to expel their feelings. From these emotions they develop understandings that they wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for this experience. Others come to me because they just want to be understood and validated in some way. There are so many reasons why clients visit with me and not all of them are helpful (eg. to validate bad behaviour).

The clients I enjoy working with the most are those who are the most disempowered in the community - those who are looking for a sense of justice and someone who will go beyond being a counsellor and who will advocate for them. These clients want a voice amongst a screaming bureaucracy and professionals who have all the power and impose that power with little to no understanding of the clients experiences. I love this work because it represents the best form of Social Work.

It has its problems though because there is no funding for this work in private practice and all I ever receive from other professionals is negativity. I will be waiting for a long time before I hear any of those professionals I work with while advocating for clients tell me that they appreciate the work I do. I know I am an irritation to many of them because I am there to speak for my client. One would think that within the Social Work profession we would celebrate difference. To have someone critique your work and to suggest other ways of working I would have thought was a positive aspect of Social Work. We haven’t developed as a profession where we see this as an essential aspect of he work we do even though it is codified in the AASW code of ethics.

I am aware that amongst child protection workers I am often seen as “the enemy”. I am frustrated that the work I do is not valued. I am angry that I am viewed as an irritation. I am resentful that there are some social workers who haven’t even met me pass judgement on me because of what others have said about me. I am disappointed in my own profession because no one has supported me in the work I do. I have attended many meetings over the years with other social workers who bag Families SA in ways that I would never think of doing but none of them have ever confronted the organisation or workers about unhelpful practices. They tend to hide amongst anonymity and the sly comment when they think they are talking to a sympathetic listener, but they do nothing. 

So I am like the “Shag on the rock”, easy pickings and a clear shot, for anyone who wants to take out their frustrations. Not only do I not get paid for the work I do with this client group but it is emotionally exhausting. Recently a client told me that her partner stated that I wasn’t doing enough for them to have their child returned to them. Not only have I been working for them for twelve months without any payment what so ever, I field calls from them evenings and on weekends. I have meetings about their case at the highest possible level. I feel their pain and frustration. I keep this to myself but it has a toll. I go through periods when I lack enthusiasm and start staring down a very dark and deep hole. This is not a good place to be.

I am not seeking sympathy but I am seeking understanding. I know that I am reasonably competent at what I do. My goal has always been to work as a partnership with other professionals because it is through that sort of collegiate enterprise that we will have the best outcomes. I know from experience that is the case. We need to understand what it means to have other critique the work we do and we need to understand that the more we understand the practices of others, either helpful or not, we will be develop a better and more comprehensive idea of our own practice. This produces better outcomes for clients.