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Star Hobson

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by city gent 65, Dec 15, 2021.

  1. Offcomedun

    Offcomedun Important Player
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    So are you advocating changing the entire basis of social work training? All over the country? Or just in Bradford? Being a parent is useful, but it's not the be all and end all.

    There's a lot more to social work than just having experience of bringing up kids. You need good literacy skills to write reports for courts, adoption panels etc and case notes that could end up being legally scrutinised; you have to be capable of taking cases to court and giving good verbal evidence under oath and hostile cross examination; you need good advocacy skills to help clients deal with various official agencies; you need to be able to cope with child protection case conferences involving often hostile parents; the ability to work with, hold your own with (and sometimes challenge) other professionals such as teachers, doctors etc, who generally have more status in the system than you; plus the guts to go into the homes of people who emphatically don't want you there and to question and challenge them in often hostile circumstances; etc etc.
    Many people seem to think that you just need parenting skills and common sense, but it's a lot more involved and challenging than that and just being an experienced parent doesn't necessarily mean you have all the required skills.

    Social Worker is a protected title. It's illegal to call yourself a Social Worker unless you have completed a social work training course approved by the regulator - Social Work England. All of these courses are university based because the job requires a higher level of intellectual rigour than you probably think, for the reasons outlined above.

    I agree that getting more mature people into social work is a good aspiration and it's one that has been around for years. But it's easier said than done. People are not queuing up to do it. It requires paying good enough salaries to attract mature people with the necessary skills and intellect into a profession that is badly paid and has low status by comparison to other comparable professions. After 32 years qualified, despite getting extra increments for specialist Approved Mental Health Practitioner training, I retired on £34k per year; not a poverty wage, obviously, but a very poor one for the training, challenges and responsibilities involved.

    There is undoubtedly a place for experienced non-professionally qualified people within the child protection system. We used to have quite a lot of them working in council-run Family Centres dotted around the city. Those people (unburdened by the legal and case management responsibilities outlined above) were there to provide intensive work with parents of kids on the Child Protection Register/ at risk of coming into care. Sadly, many of those valuable types of services have been scaled down or cut altogether because of budget cuts imposed by central government.
     
  2. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    Thank you, That was a great reply and a detailed response outlining the problems we face to improve both child protection and mental health service that often is ignored by society. Hopefully these problems will be resolved but a wider use of age and experience am sure would help, Of course a lot of older people are quite intelligent to do the job but never got the chance of a university education until the chance to go there was improved by lowering standards
     
  3. Bigrod

    Bigrod Captain
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    A very under used piece of legislation is hidden away in the Children Act 1989. Rather than try and paraphrase it, here is the actual wording of the legislation.

    Section 43 Child assessment orders.

    (1)On the application of a local authority or authorised person for an order to be made under this section with respect to a child, the court may make the order if, but only if, it is satisfied that—

    (a)the applicant has reasonable cause to suspect that the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm;

    (b)an assessment of the state of the child’s health or development, or of the way in which he has been treated, is required to enable the applicant to determine whether or not the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm; and

    (c)it is unlikely that such an assessment will be made, or be satisfactory, in the absence of an order under this section.

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/43

    This could be used to require the parent or those with Parental Responsibility to take the child to a centre for examination, if there is doubt about the child's care and a belief that the child has or is at risk of suffering significant harm.

    Star was at an age, when she would not be expected to attend school (unlike Arthur Labinjo-Jones).

    A parent/carer can claim accidental injury, Social Workers are not qualified to decide if an injury was accidental or not and the professional opinion of a qualified medical practitioner would be required.

    I don't live in Bradford, but you could always make a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act, as to how many such applications Bradford MBC have actually made. They shouldn't provide confidential details, just the raw figures, would be an indication as to how they used the legislation to protect children.
     
  4. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    As usual those responsible will close ranks along with the investigators blaming workload and money and of course the report will end with popular phrase loved by those in power and responsible that "Lessons will be learnt"
    Until the next one that is,
     
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  5. Bigrod

    Bigrod Captain
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    One of the significant problems, is the shortage of places for children to stay, if they are removed from their parent. Again rather than me trying to paraphrase the situation here is the current Government view, “Despite numbers of fostering households and foster carers in England being at their highest levels ever, these increases are not keeping up with demand in the sector”. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofsted-lack-of-foster-carers-mean-children-missing-out-on-support
    So you remove a young vulnerable child and have nowhere to place them.

    Some of the lessons to learn could include:
    • Increase the number of Foster Carers, which amongst other things may mean pay them more.
    • Penalise Local Authorities who rely to heavily on ‘Agency’ workers, who can drift in and out at short notice.
    • Encourage people to take up Social Work as a career. Too many feel undervalued, and it is becoming harder to recruit good candidates. That will include better remuneration.
    • Provide the funds to enable this. That will mean more out of the local budget, so Council Tax to be increased and/or more money through central Government vis taxation.
    Yes undoubtedly training and supervision needs to be improved. Polite, and primarily a child focussed, approach. Staff need to be able to deal with accusations that they are being discriminatory, issues which are often thrown at workers, as a defence tactic to deflect attention.

    So it is not just Social Workers, but society in general that needs to learn lessons.
     
  6. Edin Nowhere

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  7. Fordy117

    Fordy117 Just call me Mr Flip-Flop!
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    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  8. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    Those employed by Bradford's Children's Services will be employed by the new Authority, Some probably promoted, It is how the civil service work with Unions in charge not the bosses who are fearful of them
     
  9. Offcomedun

    Offcomedun Important Player
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    This independent trust thing will make sweet feck all difference. As it hasn't in several of the other areas in which it's been tried.
    From what I understand , most Bradford child protection teams are understaffed, and those who are there are mostly short term agency staff and newly qualifieds just out of university. The teams are overworked and chronically short of expertise. Support services, to assist keeping kids out of care, are a pale shadow of what they used to be - thanks for abolishing Sure Start, Mr Cameron.
    The cuts have also left social workers' wages below those of many other regional local authorities. Add in the constant demand caused by terrible social conditions in Bradford and the pressure of the job becomes unbearable.
    So who is going to want to come here? There's a national shortage of qualified child protection social workers, so people can pick and choose once they've got their probationary period out of the way. Unless they're prepared to increase the team sizes, so that workers' caseloads are manageable, and pay premium wages to attract good experienced SWs & team managers then it's all just shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic. And where's the money coming from to do that? What other directorate's services are they going to cut to increase the budget of what is already the biggest bottomless pit in the council?
     
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  10. Offcomedun

    Offcomedun Important Player
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    You keep going on about the unions, but you're just spouting outdated myths. Probably less than a third of the social services workforce are now union members. And the quality of representation for social services staff is appallingly bad because the branch leaders see them as highly paid and unrepresentative of the manual and unqualified clerical staff that make up the bulk of the council workforce.
    I was a NALGO/UNISON steward for 25 years and by the time I stopped stewarding, about ten years ago, it was a total waste of time. Wages, staff levels and working conditions have dropped off a cliff since Cameron and Osborne slashed the budgets to pieces and the unions have been unable to do a thing about it. The unions still perform a necessary function by representing individuals over grievances, disciplinaries etc, but as far as collective bargaining and influencing council decisions they're about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
     
    #50 Offcomedun, Jan 26, 2022
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2022
  11. Salty

    Salty Impact Sub

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    They've been doing it for decades...you must have been too busy dancing to have noticed
     
  12. JonButterfield

    JonButterfield Star Player
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    How dumb is that the second a tragedy like the Star murder occurs, it's social worker's to blame.

    But when a terrorist incident occurs and the person was 'known' to authorities, it's not MI5's fault.
    When a burglary happens and it's a known delinquent, it's not the police's fault.

    This is just a general point, but people who do wish or choose to blame social workers quite instinctively after these awful events, how many cases do you think they should be working? And how many do you think they are? Just ball park figures?
     
  13. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    Just out of curiosity were your wages as a shop steward paid for by your union or the council?
     
  14. Edin Nowhere

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    Has the CEO of Bradford Council who gets paid about £250k a year including pension benefit said a word about the abject failure under her watch. It's not like she has just taken over, she has been there since 2015 and things have got worse.
     
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  15. Offcomedun

    Offcomedun Important Player
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    Like most shop stewards in the council I had a full time council job, in my case as a social worker. Branch meetings were mostly held at lunchtimes. I was allowed release to attend Level 1 and 2 meetings with management and for disciplinary hearings and individual consultation with members. There were times (restructures etc) when the union side got busy but it was generally a fairly small proportion of my working life.

    Management benefits from having organised representation of its workforce and I always had a very constructive working relationship with social services management, who valued my input. Likewise, the workforce valued having a focal point to give their views to middle and higher managers who might otherwise have been out of touch with issues and views at the coal face.
    Before Osborne's cuts decimated the budget, causing massive reduction in staffing, services and morale, it was a system that worked well. Yes, there were occasional disputes about staffing issues or management plans but in the main it was a collaborative process that made the organisation more in touch with its workforce. I firmly believe that our union input contributed to the high standards and great reputation that Bradford Social Services used to have.
     
  16. Aaron Baker

    Aaron Baker Impact Sub

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    You might be working on a false assumption there. For me anyway, when a known terrorist threat goes through with a plot I do want the security services as a whole to be accountable both as a whole and individuals. When a career criminal keeps on committing offences I do want to know if more can be done to stop it.

    I don't actually know and would be interested to find out to be honest, it's probably an important point in general terms and I do have general sympathy with anybody in a crucial role when they're overworked.

    I'm not quite so sure it's relevant in this particular case though and that's where the general points and the case specific points separate for me. I can understand that abusers can be cunning, secretive and deceptive which makes an investigative social workers life extremely difficult and cases like that can get lost in an overburdened process.

    However, I can't get my head around the sheer number of open and overt red flags that have come out from this case. Even if someone has 100 cases to look at when they should have 50 I don't know how anyone could look at what has come out about the warning signs for this poor little kid and think "Do you know what, it's probably nothing, I'll close it at look at something else".
     
    #56 Aaron Baker, Jan 27, 2022
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2022
  17. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    Maybe there should be a legal requirement for social workers with the sanction of prosecution or disbarment of practice when mistakes are made and things go wrong, You can give a child back if mistakes are made if you take them in to care, However you cannot bring them back to life if left and goes wrong,
     
  18. Offcomedun

    Offcomedun Important Player
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    Things have got worse because the council has no money to improve them. And, at the same time, demand is increasing because increasing poverty levels and the stresses of the pandemic are creating more child protection issues. Bradford's overall council budget has been progressively decimated by central government cuts, but the budget proportion required to fund child protection and other social services keeps going up and up. Where's the money coming from to even stand still, let alone improve things?

    Children's Services in Bradford have been failing for the last decade - well before the current CEO took up her post. It needs major investment to recruit experienced staff at a time when social workers and team managers can be picky where they choose to work (see my post #49 above). But there is no money in the pot to do this. The vast majority of Bradford Council Tax payers, who never have contact with child protection services, would scream blue murder if other council services that affect everyone were to be slashed to pump more money into child protection. It's easy to blame the CEO, but how would you repair a sinking ship with no tools?
     
  19. Edin Nowhere

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    Aren't the council spending £25m+ to build a pointless office? Hasn't the council pumped vast amounts into the fantasy capital of culture bid? I seem to remember us spending £300k on a statue outside the Library. How much did they spend on a car park? 4m?

    To name but a few things.
     
  20. Aaron Baker

    Aaron Baker Impact Sub

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    Are there not things that can be done outside of just paying more? Especially when their are a finite number of social workers in the region/country. Paying more to get better case workers to Bradford surely just means that the poor standard staff go to Huddersfield or Leeds so as a whole doesn't protect any more kids.

    Better training, better processes, more efficient working practices, etc etc. Are we saying that these things can not be improved on in any way and it's simply down to paying more as per usual?
     

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