Magill Magazine
July 2002
Fit to Practise?
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain is a
qualified social worker
AS SOCIAL WORK IN
THAT THE PROFESSION IS FLAWED BEYOND SALVATION.
This is a landmark year for social work in Ireland, with the Irish Association
of Social Workers celebrating 30 years of existence; as good a time as any to evaluate
what social work has become over its relatively short lifespan.
There is no social work equivalent of the Irish Medical Council, which last
year found against Dr Moira Woods in relation to her investigations into child
sex abuse at the
Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence about what social work actually is
right now was contained in an article in the summer/autumn 2001 edition of
Irish Social Worker on "Evidence Based Social Work" the newest fad in
social work. All social work practice must now be "evidence based', it
told us, which might lead the reasonable person to ask: "If you are now
basing what you do on evidence, what did you base it on before you were relying
on evidence?"
The internal ideological dynamics of social work pass the ordinary person by as
they go about their lives. They are unaware of the existence of the rather
strange worldview that governs family life until they have the misfortune to
come into contact with these agents of the local state. Then, their family
becomes "a referral" and finds itself inducted into an industrial
system for the Protection of Children. The family moves out of the constitution
as a revered basic unit of Irish society into a post-feminist landscape where
misandry and expediency rules.
Enforcing the educational advantages that the middle class in any society have
over working-class people, social workers "invite" frightened,
disorientated parents to "case conferences" where they explain in
opaque terms about the "treatment plan" for the family. I once
witnessed the chairperson of a case conference telling a working-class couple
who just wanted their kids back that they were not to worry because the
chairperson's specialised training was "Jungian"! Had this not been
so serious, it could have been part of a Monty Python script. That this
self-righteous matron could think that this bit of information was (1)
intelligible and (2) reassuring to a couple whose kids were in health board
care. Under - to say the very least - dubious circumstances, is a classic
example of the middle-class professional mindset infecting this entire area of
endeavour.
We need another set of rules and structures for people charged with protecting
children and assisting families. It would help, of course, if these could see
the children and parents they come into contact with as human beings rather
than as objectified by an abstract ideology. When occasionally eyebrows are
raised concerning the involvement of social workers in
the life of a family, the explanation for failure or error is either the
individual failings of a social worker and/or an organisational failing of
health boards snowed under with work. What will not be examined is the template
to which these social workers are working.
It would be a crass mistake to believe that Moira Woods was some off-the-wall
maverick who got it terribly wrong. In the wake of the report of the Medical
Council's Fitness to Practise Committee, there was much blather about
structures being different now - multi-disciplinary working-peer reviews, etc,
etc. What hasn't changed since the time of Moira Woods is the worldview of the
vast majority of those "practising" child
protection. If any thing, this has got worse. The current child
protection system is largely premised on the "fact" that children
are, ordinarily, at risk from the nearest available male, usually the father.
The fact - yes, fact - that children are now and always have been statistically
more at risk from the mother is ignored.
If social work were a profession like law, medicine or teaching, then there
would be a thriving private practice. Social workıs professional services are
only in demand from the state and from organisations that carry out operations
on behalf of the state. The idea of a private individual soliciting the
services of a social worker to provide a service to them is, quite frankly,
bizarre, disordered and mad.
It was stated in the Irish Social Worker last year (Vol.19 No.2-3) that the
health board-run child protection system was falling to pieces. Social workers
are apparently voting with their feet and leaving in droves. This is excellent
news. The system cannot be patched and covered up. It must be put permanently
and verifiably beyond use. The structure is unsound; it cannot be repaired or
renovated. It must be knocked down and a new one built from the ground up.