What’s wrong with Child Protection?

For years I have been writing about my involvement with clients who have become involved with the child protection system. I am always reading what is happening not just in Australia but all over the world. It interests me that there are very few jurisdictions where they have it “right”. My guess is that the Scandinavian countries tend to have a better understanding of social justice so seem to  have very few detractors. Because of  this perhaps their Social Workers tend to practice differently.

The problem is so complex it is often difficult just finding a starting point. I also understand that because I don’t work within the system I therefore may not understand the complexities. What I do understand is that the principles of Social Work are universal and it doesn’t matter how old you are or when you gained your degree or even how experienced you are the underlying values of Social Work are a constant.

Recently I met with a couple of colleagues who have spent some time working in Child Protection within the government system. They were more than pleased to talk about what’s wrong with child protection. It was somewhat heartening to hear others talk about a system which is damaged because of the lack of effective Social Work practice. A system driven by egos and a strong need to control others. One of these Social Workers predicted that the system will reach a critical mass and implode. This is a prediction which is likely to be realised but I wonder about all the people who will be damaged along the way. For one of my friends, talking about the system under which she worked, was a stressful and saddening experience, it became obvious that the damage caused to her by this unforgiving and relentless industry, was severe.

What I see are Child Protection staff working to establish a power base centred around controlling others and using very covert ways to punish, put down and denigrate others. Time and time again I see toxic relationships being developed between client and worker. I am sure that Social Workers don’t consider for a moment the power differential which exists between them and clients. I suspect that they rarely consider the language they use and the impact their decisions have on the wellbeing of the parent and child.

I am over hearing parents tell me that they have been told not to be emotional around their children during access. As one client stated to me this week. “They don’t have children of their own, they are so young, yet they ask me not to have any emotions when I see the children that I love and I only get to see them for one hour a week”. To ask a parent not to be emotional is just plain stupid. The idea that it will be upsetting to children is just as stupid. Kids need to see that expressing emotions is fine and particularly that they are not responsible for our emotions. What makes it worse is that the parent then is blamed for not moderating their emotions. It is an old fashioned idea which should be sent to the scrap heap. But what it does do is give the worker power and control over the parent and how the child is to experience them. Non-thinking, young social workers would get sucked into these ideas, unfortunately these ideas are propagated by older social workers who are even more stupid because they should be doing things differently. Parents who have these messages presented to them feel devalued, not listened too, disrespected and disempowered. None of this is going to improve the relationship between worker and client. Clients often become so resentful that they begin to push against the system and make life as uncomfortable as they can for the workers. I fail to see how generating two waring parties is about acting in the best interest of the child.

When are we ever going to understand that building relationships with disenfranchised parents is actually in the best interest of children? How are we ever going to break the cycle of abuse if we fail to understand that education and belief in the parent is an integral part of change. We fail to offer parents appropriate solutions to the problems that confront them. We blame them endlessly without weight to the fact that they are often the products of poor parenting.

We have to stop using attachment theory as a tool to justify the removal of a child and realise that the purpose of attachment theory was to educate parents about better ways to attach to their children. We should invest in attachment therapy and work with parents to better understand their own attachment needs rather than blame them for what their parents bestowed on them. 

All I see is the child protection system falsely believing that they are the better parent even though the statistics tell us something totally different. It is about time that Social Workers began to act like Social Workers and strive to change the way they work and to finally focus on the family. However what is lacking here are the skills required to do attain this goal. Social Workers, generally, lack counselling skills, advocacy skills, conflict resolutions skills, mediation skills, engagement skills, problem solving skills and many more. They lack knowledge concerning relationships, domestic violence, drug and alcohol use, gambling addiction and mental health.

From my perspective there are some massive changes which are required before the system works in the best interest of children. Social Workers are often only case managers, and the reason for this is that they are not expected to have the skills required to be effective at their work. It would be abhorrent to those who manage this industry if we actually worked to keep families together, after all it is really about the many people who profit from keeping children separate from their parents. We need to work differently so that parents can learn to nurture their children appropriately and break the cycle which has proved so damaging to them. 

Advocacy and Social Work

For those of you who have read my previous blogs know that advocacy is something that I find particularly challenging. So I thought it was time to make some notes about this area of Social Work and how it impacts my practice and me personally.

There are a few guiding principles which are important to adhere to. We must use the three guiding principles of our profession as defined by our code of ethics.

• Respect of Person.
• Social Justice.
• Professional Integrity.

As an advocate these underpin everything we do. In my experience my role as a Social Worker is to identify practices which contradict these three principles. Not listening to clients, dismissing what they say, devaluing them, being punitive, changing the rules, failing to follow through on what was promised, and many more are reasons why it is important for advocates to challenge such behaviours.

Even though other Social Workers may work within systems that don’t value the Social Work role it is no excuse for bad behaviour. Advocating for some clients may depend on these behaviours being identified and another Social Worker being appointed. Unhelpful behaviour will prohibit the work you are doing with the client just as much as the clients own behaviour may interfere with the process.

Advocacy is not glamorous nor would I say it is very rewarding. I can have a therapeutic counselling session with a client and look back and acknowledge that we made progress or the client had some realisation that caused them to think about their situation differently. I can have a number of those clients in one day. How satisfying is that?

Today I had a client whom I haven’t seen for some time call me and tell me that his relationship with his partner was the best it had ever been and he had learnt so much about his aggressive behaviour and has realised the impact this has had on his family. Now that was satisfying.

Even group work has some sensational moments of realisation and change.

However, advocacy work doesn’t have the same sense of satisfaction. The primary reason for this is that an advocate isn’t always looking for change in their client. This doesn’t mean that individual change isn’t required but often it isn’t what drives the work.

There are times though when change is needed and not just from the client. We may need to ask the client to behave differently in order to be heard and we may have to ask the “other side” to change their behaviour so that the client can be listened to.

It isn’t helpful if the client is yelling at others and threatening them. Bad behaviour makes it difficult for anyone to advocate for them. Often it is important to assess what are the barriers to advocating appropriately that may hinder the process. I have found when those barriers are created by the client then it is easier to seek change. Clients who trust us will often see the benefit in changing their behaviour if they understand that this will be the key to them getting what they want. Frankly, clients who continue to behave badly are better left alone. Many years ago I worked with a client who could not accept that his behaviour caused immeasurable harm to his cause and that if he continued to behave in an aggressive way he would never get his children back. Advocating for him and the subsequent court case was extremely damaging to me professionally. However, I learnt much from this experience and have never repeated the mistake.

Being an advocate isn’t always working so that the client gets what they want. I have worked with many clients who wanted to have their children returned to them and I could see that this was not going to happen because it wasn’t in the best interest of the child. This didn’t stop me from attending meetings so that access arrangements could be negotiated or so that a relationship between the client and other workers could be improved.

The strength of an advocate is that you are not automatically in the opposing camp. At the outset the client views you as someone who is prepared to listen to them and to at least understand their perspective. This doesn’t mean that you automatically accept the clients reasons why they believe that things should be different. We can certainly understand the reasons why they may feel so aggrieved but we must also assess the situation from our own Social Work perspective and assess what is in everyone’s best interest.

The major issue for me is that colleagues don’t often see the value of an advocate. Before we say anything we are often viewed as the “enemy”. Rather than this being an opportunity to collaborate and to discover productive ways of bringing about a solution we are seen as confronting and a hindrance. I have pondered this problem for sometime and can only surmise that this is brought about because some Social Workers believe that they are the “experts” in the clients life. In child protection in particular they are locked into the notion that they are working in the best interest of the child, to the exclusion of parents and other stakeholders. They are also fearful that their practice may be exposed as inadequate. If you hold that fear then you are open to be exposed and should be critiqued.

What drives me is the notion of Social Justice. This is a principle that all social workers should adhere too but few seem to understand what it means in the context of their practice. Fairness and equity are key principles. When I was at University we were taught that we needed to be aware of power differentials and that it was the role of the social worker to ensure that their language, appearance and settings did not disadvantage clients. I was taught that we were to be client centred and that the client was the expert in their lives. I was even taught that our role was to work with clients to empower them and that we could assist them to discover what changes they needed to make in their lives. For an advocate these are important principles.

As an advocate we are challenged by the situations clients find themselves in but we are even more challenged by the systems which are created to make it difficult for the most vulnerable in our community to be heard. Unfortunately most of the gatekeepers in these systems are Social Workers.

Its Politics that keeps children in care

Recently I was told that Families SA would not support the return of a clients child to the mother regardless of the changes the mother had made. As disappointing as this is it caused me to wonder about the reasons such a decision would be made given that the social workers working with the mother and child would agree that the mother is more than capable of looking after and caring for her daughter. If I was to ask what the reasons were, I am sure I would receive a response that was unsatisfactory so it is better not to ask. What I am left to do is speculate.

I believe that if this mother was “mother Theresa” it wouldn’t change their decision. The reason for this is that if they began to release children back into their parents care it would be admitting that perhaps they didn’t do their job properly in the first instance, which in this case they didn’t. They would set a precedent which would mean that more parents such as my client would see the department as “weakening” and these parents would also want their children back. What would they do if they happened to make a mistake? None of the reasons why they would not return a child to someone like my client has anything to do with the child’s wellbeing, and certainly has nothing to do with Social Work.

In fact the real reasons why they wont return the child will be played out in court by Crown solicitors who don’t give a damn about the child anyway and who are more interested in acting for their self serving masters. Everyone who supports the mother will be questioned in an effort to prove that they are really not supportive of the mother or to find some fault in their testimony which will make them appear unreliable. None of this is about what is in the best interest of the child it becomes all about winning the case.

The likes of David Waterford, who represents the state care system in this state, need to understand that they are a terrible parent and in some cases are not acting in the best interest of the children. There is something quite ironical about the notion that David is the “Head of the Household” but never meets the children. Talk about an absent father. The “Waterford Factor” is the idea that under no circumstances where a child is on a GOM 18 should they be returned to their parent/s. This is in essence contradicts all that we as Social Workers stand for. Social Work is about change and those of us who do this work no and work for change in individuals, and experience it. When a parent changes significantly and this change is sustained then they need be rewarded. Somehow within child protection that is a strange notion.

As much as I admire David and others like him for the effort they are putting into changing the structures under which they work and the way David supports, sometimes blindly, his staff, I know that very little will change as long as The Waterford Factor” is present. When Child Protection becomes about “politics” decisions will always be made which are not about what is in the child’s best interest.

If the Social Workers workers who are working with my client were given the authority to do what they considered was in the child’s best interest the child would probably be with her mother today or at least close to reunification. But because these people are not seeing the political impact of such a decision they are prohibited from doing what is in the best interest of the child. For some Social Workers working within child protection this must be very frustrating. It would be a wonderful thing if you all could make a stand and express your beliefs and social work values. It would be refreshing to have you speak out against the restrictions that you experience when attempting to practice social work.

I was reminded at a recent meeting that Child Protection plays a part in keeping children safe. I was also reminded, AGAIN, that it is all about what is in the best interest of the child. People keep reminding me of this because they, through these veiled comments, are suggesting that I haven’t the child’s best interests in mind. That is utter crap. My assessment of parents is thorough and comprehensive. I have never advocated for a child to be returned to a parent where I have had concerns for the child’s safety. 

For all social workers it is important to understand that we are not to become involved in politics which is harmful, disrespectful and which is not in accord with Social Work values. The danger has always been that “The Waterford Factor” ignores the needs of individuals and focus’s on political structures and risk. It fails to understand what Social Work represents and how effective Social Work can be in changing peoples lives.

Where do the flies go when night falls?

It was only this week that I found myself sitting in the middle of Australia talking about social work and what it meant. A couple of days a month I fly out to a remote mining cite and hear all sorts of stories about the challenges faced by living so far away from home, working long hours, work relationships and their challenges and many other issues.

As I am writing this I am again at another remote mining cite talking with people who have experienced an unexpected loss. I often take the diversity of my work for granted. Recently I have been feeling lethargic, laconic and very very relaxed about the work I do. There is very little which surprises me any more and there is very little new about what I am doing. I know I haven't done it all and I know that there is more I can do. There is that book I started years ago that I haven't finished. There is the Journal article I haven't started, a number of them in fact. There are the cases I haven't concluded and the fights I still need to have. There is a broken system here and there which I haven't fixed or even dented. There are people still needing to be heard but have no one who will act for them. There is the publishing company which needs to have a presence on the Internet. This list seems endless.

As I sat in the desert pondering the issues which concerned me and feeling unmotivated to do anything about them, I considered the most important issue of the moment "where do the flies go when night falls?". So this has where it all has lead me - to pondering something as bewildering and as insignificant a question as this. As I was boarding the plane to return home I had to enter the aircraft cabin through a wall of flies eager to attach themselves to sweaty, clammy bodies. Some flies were captured in the plane and as we took off and rose higher and higher I was watching a fly on my window sliding down into the ledge at the bottom of the window. I surmised that this was because of the pressurised cabin or the change in temperature or that he was just a bloody lazy fly that wanted to have a break. This entertained me for some minutes until we were at a hight which allowed me to turn my ipad on and commence watching the video I wasn't able to complete on arrival.

Where has all the preoccupation gone concerning conflicts, client dilemmas, ethical issues and STRESS. It has all vanished into a fly dying on my window and pondering where they go at night.


Tony Tonkin
Accredited Mental Health Social Worker
International Counselling Service
Ph 0414 883 153

Location:Australia

Inquiry into Child Abuse–What will they find?

Over the years there have been many inquiries into child abuse in this country. A few years ago in South Australia there was the mulligan inquiry. We have had apologise from Federal and State governments regarding the Stolen Generation and the F0rg0tten Australians. Now we are about to embark on another enquiry. What will it find that the other enquiries haven’t found? I can’t help but think that the same old rocks are going to be uncovered by the same people who have already told their story. Perhaps they will consider telling their story in this Inquiry more significant than a State Government Inquiry but one has to wonder what will change?

As a therapist I am profoundly aware of the need for people to tell their story and for this story to be heard by someone who is prepared to listen and, for some, to believe that the “wrong” can be “righted”. I hope that for some this is another step that makes the impact if being abused less painful.  How often though do people have to tell their story? What is it that we expect to change?

History tells us that very little changes. If there was significant change and the lives of young people were no longer affected by systematic and institutional abuse we wouldn’t need to have any further inquiries. In twenty years time is there likely to be another set of inquiries for a new generation of abused children simply because we still haven’t got it “right”? Are we more enlightened now than we were twenty years ago? We may think we are but we are still not able to understand the problem. It is like arguing that we are less violent today than we were twenty years ago. Well we are not.

A quote from the Australian Institute of Criminology demonstrates what I am saying.

“The public's perception is that violence is increasing, but trends in violent crime reported to police since the early 1990s reveal a mixed story. Homicide has decreased by nine percent since 1990 and armed robbery by one-third since 2001, but recorded assaults and sexual assaults have both increased steadily in the past 10 years by over 40 percent and 20 percent respectively. The rate of aggravated assault appears to have contributed to the marked rise in recorded assault, and for both assault and sexual assault the rate of increase was greater for children aged under 15 years, with increases almost double that of the older age group.”

It is good news that we are not killing each other as often as we use to but the violence has increased. We are not enlightened at all so it is about time we realised that there is more at play here which needs to be resolved. It is great news that as a community through our political leaders we are able to finally say “sorry”. It is about time that we learn that the amount of times we say “sorry” is limited. “Sorry” only has meaning if it is a solemn declaration that whatever you say “sorry” for will never happen again. Well it will and it is happening now.

The longer we believe that the “Nanny State” is the best parent we will always have institutionalised and government sanctioned abuse. Through plain ignorance rather than through any deliberate behaviour. We will only implement change when we begin to value parenting, stop judging those who struggle, realise that people can change, and offer appropriate social work interventions that focus on families, rather than removal.

It is my hope that “Sorry” is heart felt and those words will never have to be repeated again.

The Still Forgotten Australians–The Foster Care System

As of June 30th 2011, in Australia, there were 37,648 children in out-of –home care. This is an increase of 4.9% on 2009. (www.aifs.gov.au) The cost of maintaining out-of-home care is $2.3 billion. It is important that we understand this is not just about the financial strain on our economy and we shouldn’t make this about the money, but this does raise an issue about the “Child Protection Industry” and the part we all play in supporting it. I have argued for some time that we are continuing to support an industry which fails family on a regular basis. I know that this is not the intention of those who work in the industry but it is a regrettable outcome.

I wonder about what we have learnt from the past? I wonder about the inquiries into childhood abuse and the child protection industry in general? How many apologies can we issue before they are like the abusive partner who keeps saying they are “Sorry” after beating the crap out of their partner. We will continue to get it wrong until we acknowledge that there is something basically wrong with the current system. We are creating another system of abused kids who will have to wait until they are into middle age before they are offered another apology.

We will always need a system which cares for kids who are unable to live with their parents. How many of the children currently in care could not be returned to their families. Last week Tim Carmody, who heads the Queensland Inquiry into the Child Protection system, was recommending that each of the 8,000 children in care be evaluated to see who could be returned to their parents. Carmody acknowledged that parents change and that there are many parents who are no longer living with their abusive partner or are no longer using drugs. My biggest beef has been that we ignore the idea that parents can change and that there needs to be some consideration for this within the system which takes children away from their parents. One just has to look at the complicated and often expensive process to have a case re-heard by the Youth Court, that you realise how difficult a review is.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if David Waterford sought to review each case by an independent group of professionals with the view to re-unification. The financial savings would be significant and the damage caused to children living away from their parents will be minimized. How about putting the savings into more services to support parents so that children were not removed at all or only for a temporary period?

If we continue to fail these children we will be breading another “Forgotten Generation”. To all you Social Workers out there, practice as you were taught, apply the ethical standards of our profession and instruct your organisation about Social Work Practice. Challenge prejudicial and judgemental behaviour, work to ensure that the strengths of parents are identified and built on, engage with parents at a meaningful level, as helper and facilitator for change.

Don’t say stupid and unhelpful comments that put down parents and make them feel like failures and second class citizens. Recently I had a woman call me and told me a disturbing story about a Social Worker who told her that “child sexual abuse isn’t as bad as some forms of abuse and besides the kids get over it.” This came from a senior social worker who clearly is a fabulous role model to others who work with him. If this is the sort of thinking that pervades the department then we are no further down the track than we were fifty years ago when we were blaming kids and locking them up for being abandoned. Has out thinking changed? NO. I am angered and very disappointed to hear that Social Workers are propagating this sort of crap.

Lets just so “Sorry” to all the children the system is abusing now and the tens of thousands we will abuse in the future.  

Why doesn’t anything change?

This is a question which I find more puzzling as I realise that no matter how much time you put into something, or how passionate I become it makes very little difference. My experience has been that the more “the system”is challenged the greater the resistance. I wonder if those who work within structures that produce poor results all feel as helpless from the inside as I do from the outside. When does “learned helplessness” take over so that every client they see is identified as “too hard” and the training they received or the reason why they entered Social Work somehow has dissipated into a past memory and suppressed emotion.

I have many clients who potentially sit in the “too hard basket”. Often this is where a person’s beliefs are so entrenched that it is difficult finding the intervention that will cause them to shift. I know it would be easy to tell myself that I could be working with other clients who have better prospects and who will do the work that will bring about change. But I know that if I wasn’t working with these people that they would find it difficult finding people that would work with them. They all have a history of some contact with a worker then the worker has to cease the work because the organisation has limited resources and are unable to see any progress so they are told to find someone else.

My guess that there are many of these people trapped in a system which doesn’t care about them and isn’t prepare for the long haul. They get shunted from one service provider to another or give up entirely. As a private practitioner it is my decision alone which will determine the length of service. I believe that if a person is prepared to remain engaged, and I believe my involvement will eventually produce some change then I will remain for as long as it takes. If I was working for another organisation I wouldn’t have that authority. If I was told to move on from a client whom I believed in and couldn’t do the work in the clients time frame then I guess I might become a little jaded – certainly disillusioned.  I can remember when I was working as a therapist in a gambling program the most critical comments made of me, and there were many, was that I was not restricting the number of sessions with clients. I certainly resisted the notion that the client had to fit into the agencies time frame.

If I was working within the child protection system I would feel absolute frustration because the time frame is often determined by legal requirements. A voluntary care agreement (VCA) means that the practitioner has to see a significant change in a mater of a few months. Most practitioners probably find that acceptable and because they don’t see any change will then apply for a twelve month order or go straight to a Guardianship of the Minister to 18 (GOM18). If a Social Worker is skilled enough perhaps they would be able to engage with the client in a meaningful way which would enable change and perhaps a partnership could be developed which would ensure that the child is safe and that the parent is able to be the parent they need to be.  However, if the Social Worker sees all clients through the “learned helplessness” filter then the client is damned before they even enter court for the first time.

Frankly, we give up on clients because that is the easy alternative. The “system” allows and supports it. Social Workers support this idea because they haven’t the guts to change the system because sometimes it fits with there own level of incompetence.

Once we give up on one client we will find reasons to give up on others until we get to a point where we will be looking for reasons to give up on them all.