A national radio station recently celebrated the work of the emergency services – ambulances, police, firefighters – and it was enlightening to listen to different perspectives, including those of professionals working on the frontline. I waited in vain, however, to hear any mention of one perennially overlooked and unappreciated emergency service that supports people and families of all ages, 365 days a year, in very difficult circumstances.
This is a service whose clients increase in number year on year, at the same time as funding is repeatedly slashed. Yet unlike with the NHS, for example, there never seems to be a public outcry or series of passionate calls to protect it. Instead, this service is more often looked down upon by the public and berated by the media.
Yet this service ensures vulnerable people receive the care, support and protection they need, in collaboration with their family and friends. This service advocates for and speaks on behalf of those who do not have a voice, fighting oppression and social injustice, helping rebuild families and communities.
And one of its finest qualities – the one that most often goes unrecognised – is the fact that this particular emergency service also saves lives on a daily basis. It helps adults and children who are feeling suicidal. It supports child carers who have stopped going to school because they must look after a parent who cannot go to the toilet by themselves. It supports somebody’s mum, who has been found wandering the streets in winter with severe Alzheimer’s. It supports someone’s grandson, who is being secretly abused by a family friend.
This is a service that deserves to be celebrated, yet more often it is associated with failure. It deserves to be admired, because the people who work in it don’t do so for the recognition they deserve but never get.
I’m sure social workers will have guessed by now which service I’m talking about.
In the interests of full disclosure, I need to say that I am one of the people who has been saved by social work. I was classed as a vulnerable person because I was beaten and abused by a former partner. My eye socket was broken when I was 18 weeks pregnant, and yet I went back time and time again because I was trapped in the vortex of abuse. Even though he was convicted of assault he was out within two months, which wasn’t long enough for me to escape. The abuse continued, until another attack happened when I was holding my child, which gave social services the opportunity to step in and help me.
At the time, it felt like the worst day of my life but looking back it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I was incredibly lucky. I definitely didn’t believe social services were helping me. Like many people who have been in a similar position, I thought they were there to take my baby away. I thought they were “do-gooders”, just there to interfere and stick their nose into my family’s business. But it is clear to me now that without social services, I was at high risk of ending up as another one of those dreadful statistics. A woman beaten to death by her partner, or worse: a mother whose child was murdered by their father.
My social workers varied in quality but with hindsight they were overworked and my son and I were safe with a restraining order and other safeguarding measures in place.
Children are murdered every week in this country at the hands of a caregiver. But many, many more are saved and the public does not hear about those stories.
Visit YouTube and you can see numerous videos of the moment police remove a child under a court order. I didn’t realise it was the police who were involved, as the description usually states that it’s a social worker doing the “child snatching”. The comments below are overwhelmingly critical of social services, far outweighing those who talk about the parents. Parents often choose to shame professionals on social media instead of reassuring and comforting their children, sometimes causing further distress by filming and publicising their tears.
Three years on from my social services intervention, I am now in the first year of a social work degree and I love every second of it. It really saddens me that the number of experienced social workers is dwindling, but who can honestly blame them? I took the time to write to the radio station and ask it to think about supporting social workers for the public good, but I didn’t receive a reply.
Davina Flowers is a pseudonym. The writer is a student member of the British Association of Social Workers
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