Social Work and the Family Court

The following article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald recently. Read. It reminded me of a client I have been working with over the past three years. For most of that time he hasn’t had access to his two children. His ex-wife has been particularly obstructive. There is no evidence that this man has ever fathered poorly a part from some dubious statements made by the mother. I have attempted to contact the mother so that I could hear her side of the story and confront her ex-partner if need be. She refused to speak to me and at one point was very rude and dismissive. Clearly thought I was the enemy. 

What interested me was that the mothers versions of events was seen as valid and the male was simply seen as a nutter. His love and ability to father these children was never an issue but the mothers fear for the well being of her children became paramount even though these fears were not substantiated in any way. Both these parents come with a large degree of personal baggage which eventually caused the relationship to fail. The father worked significantly on his by undertaking a number of personal development courses and contacting professionals so that he cold work on his issues. There is nothing that suggests that the mother had done the same and there is no acknowledgment by the court of the work undertaken by the father.

It seems unhelpful to suggest that the Family Court is more female friendly than male friendly. I would like to think that the court was a little more balanced than that. However what we are seeing here is the same problem I have highlighted around child protection issues. The Family Court will ask for psychiatric reports on the father because the court is told that he is the problem, but there needs to be a balance which says if we are going to have a report on the father then we need one on the mother or visa versa.

I admit that I have worked with many men who because of their level of violence and hostility to their partner I wonder about the wisdom of them having access to their children until they can demonstrate that they understand the impact their behaviour has on others and have found ways to think about their world differently. Almost an unattainable task for some men.

When one thinks about the Family Court and Child Protection it becomes evident that the Family Court lacks an interested in social justice and doesn’t focus on providing tools for people who find it difficult to parent. I accept that this is not the courts mandate and that one would expect parents who are struggling to seek help from the many community and private base providers who can offer assistance.

The Family Court wants to resolve disputes through mediation and often a very hostile court environment but when it is impossible to use either of these methods the system fails. It is admirable that the court is focussed on the best interest of the child but often it appears to be very quick at deciding who is the better parent and in doing so disadvantages one party over another. Often the children are the ones who suffer the most and as in this case will not be seeing their father for many years.

Over what do you fight?

There are many times I wonder what I need to fight over. How many times do I take on work which is exhausting, time consuming and from which I earn nothing? Most of the time. I decided that this year would be different from last year. By the end of last year I was burnt out. I didn’t have the usual crash where I feel totally miserable and alone, nor where I felt overwhelmed. This time it seemed to be different. I just wanted to take a break, have a nice long rest and regather my energy in a productive and meaningful way. To some extent that is what I did. I was determined not to have to fight in the way I have in the past to perhaps find some different ways of working which proved to be more productive and less draining.

I know that working in the area of Child Protection sucks all my energy out of me. That fighting a system which refuses to change is even more frustrating. I know that at this point I haven’t found the fight that I use to love and the energy I use to possess. However none of that has meant that I am going to turn down clients or stop doing some of the work I have in the past. Fortunately I have had another project present which has provided a break from what I would normally be doing and which has meant that I haven’t had the need to focus on other areas of my practice. Financially not a good thing because it has meant that I have let go of the more financially rewarding aspects of my practice.

But when one thinks it is all going to be easy something presents which makes you wonder what is this all about and over what am I fighting?
A client was referred to me a couple of weeks ago. Remember I didn’t have much energy and didn’t want to do much of this advocacy work at the moment because I need to focus on the financially rewarding activities. But never the less here I was with a new client and a bugger of a problem to solve.

Her daughter had been removed because of mental health issues. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and is currently under a Community Treatment Order. In my meetings with her I haven’t noticed anything which presents as a major mental health problem. There is are issues around grief and loss concerning a relative who raised her and the lack of support she experiences from her family. She certainly feels alone and isolated and is not heard. She is rational and clear about her needs and wants. She has been able to maintain the same home for over ten years. There are no significant drug and alcohol problems. So what is the real problem?

It is the way she presents. She talks about being assertive and how this is often interpreted as aggression. I can certainly understand that because there have been many times when I have chosen to be assertive, that is talk about my feelings and how I would prefer people to behave, and this has been read as aggressive. Sometimes when people choose to be direct and honest and choose not to be passive they are read as being aggressive or are seen as having a mental health problem. This is because people have a certain view as to how people are expected to behave under certain circumstances.

Passion–What does it mean?

Recently I was talking to a colleague about the work I do and she stated that she likes my “passion”. Often people have said that to me and I wonder what they really mean, what are they trying to say to me? Yes I am passionate about what I do and the clients I work with and I am passionate about Social Work and how we work as Social Workers. But sometimes the word “passion” is used as if it is something we need to be wary of.

Does it mean though if you are “passionate” you are a little unhinged that perhaps you are unable to think clearly and that you are more likely to behave in unacceptable ways. Perhaps a “passionate” person is unable to think clearly and are irrational in their decision making. Perhaps a “passionate” person is unrealistic and a little extreme. Be being “passionate” one is viewed as being part of the lunatic fringe and therefore one needs to be wary of them. 

There are other descriptions that could be used which perhaps may be more helpful. People could reflect on what they like about the way you work, the dedication you display and the values you hold. Is the use of the work “passionate” demonstrating an inability to describe what they like about you or is it an underhanded way of having a go at the work you do?

I have decided that the next time someone describes me as “passionate” or they like my “passion” I will say, “I am not sure what you mean by ‘passion’ could you tell me more?” I think I would like people to tell me that I am caring or understanding or that I am dedicated to my clients or I work towards the best outcome for my clients.

To me “passion” means energy and courage. I would like people to reflect on the effort I put into the work I do and the way I go about it. I would like to ask them if they feel passion for what they do? Perhaps we don’t reflect on where “passion” sits in our lives or what we feel passionate about. During my discussion with this person the other day she was telling me how difficult it is for her to deal with certain client issues. I was left wondering what she felt passionate about.

I have noticed that the more clinical people are about their work the less passionate they appear. We can become locked into ways of working which are about a prescribed view of the world and out work which lacks energy and insight. A passionate person is someone who is driven by their beliefs and wants to implement change at a range of different levels. Is prepared to take the battle for social justice and human rights into an array of different areas. I believe a passionate person is someone who is creative and drives the agenda rather than sitting back hoping that someone else will pick up the issue and run with it. I person who lacks passion is more likely to refer a client on rather than follow through on the issue or who feels inadequate in certain areas and is not prepared to learn new ways of working.

In Social Work the key to developing the way we work is “reflective practice”. Through these reflections we need to discover new ways of meeting the client’s needs. We need to heighten our awareness and in doing so our passion. We need to understand the values that drive us and the reason why Social Work is different and what we can offer which is special.

From now on I am going to celebrate my passion and seek clarification who use it in a thoughtless and unhelpful way. 

Kim’s Story–Thanks

I would like to thank all of those who responded to Kim’s story by sending a response to the minister. It is important that we celebrate the small things and when we notice change we also acknowledge it. I spoke to Kim today who tells me that Families SA have made some helpful suggestions regarding make-up time with her daughter and some money to pay for lunch during access. These are significant changes and even though they are small I want to thank the staff at Families SA for considering the parents in this matter and providing a more amicable and friendly way of working.

It is often the little things which make a difference. What is important is that instead of being ignored and devalued those concerned were proactive in their decision making which made Kim feel appreciated and heard. For the sake of a few dollars and a little consideration it is possible to make a difference.

Why does it sometimes seem so hard to do these simple things?

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.