Alpha Mummy: What you say about the Baby P case

Over the past 20 years I've been chased with machetes, threatened with knives and had loads of doors slammed in my face.You don't know what's behind any door, but as soon as you walk into a home you make an assessment of what is going on.

The best tool for doing your job as a social worker is your instincts. Above all, you have to remember that you are there for the child. Most of the time abusers make damned sure they are not found out, so you have to keep an eye out for the little things. Some try to hide their guilt with aggression, others welcome you in for a cup of tea and present little Johnny covered in chocolate - and that's harder. The social worker will think it's good that he's eating and that his mother is allowing him to express himself, but it also covers up the bruises.

Some years ago, I was involved in a case where a young boy accused his father of hitting him with a metal pipe. He told the school, who reported it to the police and we were called in to see him. The dad opened the door to me. There were pills on the coffee table and a woman sitting subdued in the corner of the kitchen. I told him we had been referred by his son's school - and he admitted the abuse, saying: “Yeah, I hit the little poof, the bastard,” because the boy was close to his mother and wasn't “manly” enough. He hadn't done the same to the other sons, he said, because they were more like him.

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While I was sitting there, surrounded by pills that were clearly [illegal] drugs, he began showing me photographs of his daughter. “Beautiful, isn't she?” They were obviously pornographic. She was just a little girl, dressed provocatively and sitting on the laps of his friends. I smiled, made appreciative comments and asked if his wife would like to join us. But he said: “No, she won't. She likes sitting in there.” Then I gave my usual spiel about why I was there - and the next thing I knew, he had pushed the settee against the door and pulled a knife on me.

I leapt over the settee and legged it all the way to the office. I was pretty fit in those days. The police arrested the guy and found drugs and other knives in the flat. They kept the boy at school and the other children away from him.

The council was able to work quickly then and they moved the mother to the other side of the borough, put her in a safe house and gave the children back to her. Their father was in custody - but the next day, the mother moved back to the old flat to be with him. That's the psychology of the abused. She was a victim, but she had been groomed. It's the Stockholm syndrome.

The older boy didn't want to go back, but the others did. Eventually all the children were removed from their parents because the dad was violent and the mum was unable or unwilling to protect them. So they had to be separated.

For an inner-city London social worker like me, that might be just one of up to 25 cases that you're dealing with. An office may be understaffed, but that won't stop the flow of child protection cases. In every case there is loads of paperwork.

After the referral and assessment, you have to investigate a case immediately to see if the child needs to be protected. You make your initial inquiries and if there is evidence that the child is at risk, or likely to be, you take appropriate action, perhaps removing the child to ensure his or her safety and welfare.

The investigation is ongoing - which means joint work with the police, medicals to check, and getting in touch with health and education specialists - ahead of a case conference with everyone involved, including any “significant adults” such as childminders and members of the family. In the meantime you will have had numerous strategy meetings to plan the work and timescales, with all the relevant professionals. For example, who will do the interviews with the children and when will they be done?

Of course a register can't protect children, and it's the social worker's assessment and the network that protect the child. But it's a judgment call and sometimes the call is wrong.

Ultimately it boils down to the quality of staff, the management and the training of the social worker involved. That person will be getting s**t from their cases, but they may also be getting the same from their bosses.

If she is being bullied and pressurised at work, she won't be able to do her job. It's like a mother with too many jobs to do: something has to give.
Sally-Anne Jones
The writer's name has been changed

'Being constantly suspicious is part of the territory'

It is a very difficult job to knock on the door of a household that doesn't want you there. Social workers are often intimidated and threatened when they are working with families that abuse or neglect their children.

It's easy for experts, who perhaps see children in clinics or sit in case conferences, to forget just how tough that job is. As a social worker you are constantly negotiating your way in, walking on eggshells to make sure that you retain some sort of relationship and some sort of authority with the family - and if you're not careful, this can compromise your objectivity.

Confronted with a social worker, every family will be a bit defensive. Part of the territory in child protection work is that you are constantly suspicious, and that's very tough for many families to face. Many of the families that social workers see don't abuse or neglect their children, yet if we don't approach every family actively looking for children at risk of abuse or neglect, we will miss cases.

I'm involved in a government pilot scheme for newly qualified social workers that ensures that in their first year they have the requisite skills to do this work. It is aimed at helping to recruit and retain social workers, which is a chronic problem in many parts of the country. The work is not attractive to some people because of the amount of form-filling it involves. According to the best estimates, social workers specialising in child protection spend between 40 and 60 per cent of their time completing paperwork. My concern is that this doesn't leave a lot of time for them to spend time with the families or to really think about their cases.

This paper trail produces lots of assessment information, but it's not so good at identifying what the social worker and others can do to achieve change. And that's what is really important: what is the social worker going to do with that family and other professionals to make the child safer?

The key is to ensure that the parent who has responsibility for the child is taking that responsibility seriously. In the case currently in the headlines, it would appear that the mother wasn't capable of protecting her children from these men, or wasn't a good enough mother to worry about it. But with parents who want to safeguard their children, there is a lot you can do to help them.

There needs to be an increased emphasis during training on learning about methods of protecting children and vulnerable adults from neglect and abuse. I'm not confident that universities are dedicating enough time to giving people those skills. Protecting children and vulnerable adults is our central responsibility - it is what society asks us to do.

Although child protection decisions are group decisions, made through case conferences and reviews when there are other people present, ultimately it is the social worker who has to go out and see that family. It is he or she who has to collect the information that may lead to that child being placed on the child protection register, or the commencement of legal proceedings to see that child taken from their family.

The social worker is at the sharp end of an inverted pyramid of pressure. It can be an isolating job.

Bill McKitterick
The writer has been a social worker for 35 years, ten of them as Director of Social Services for Bristol City Council. He is leading the government-initiated Children's Workforce Development Council programme to support employers of newly qualified social workers who work with children and families.

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