Quote of the Day: More Satir

I discovered long ago that people are always doing the best they know how to do at the time, although it may not be the best in hindsight or from an observor's point of view.

Satir, in Conjoint FamilyTherapy, p. 147

This is quite a radical statement, no? Do you agree? Does this apply to all of us, as we "err" through life?

Quote of the day: Failing to notice what we fail to notice

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

- Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception

Social Work in the News! Week 4: More about the Brits

For a New York oriented Social Work Blog, NY SWOG has been heavy on British news of late...

But here is an interesting article from the Guardian detailing the debate about child welfare among our former colonizers. The recent discussion revolves around two brothers in Dorcaster, aged 10 and 11 and both abused by their parents, who were placed in foster care and who proceded to abuse two other boys physically and sexually.

The Guardian gives a good account of the various issues being debated, with a focus on "damaged children" (the term used in the article) and what to do with them.

In the view of some experts, the two boys in the Edlington case were already "neurally wired" to behave in a violent manner by the age they reached their foster parents.

I am curious why how one determines if a child is neurally wired to behave violently, and what that implies - lost causes?

Some are suggesting more aggressive intervention -Martin Narey, the head of Barnardo's (which sounds like some sort of drug store or tuxedo shop but is in fact a big child welfare charity in Britain) came out saying that more infants should be taken from "broken families at birth. Here a longer quote, from another article in the Telegraph:

“We just need to take more children into care if we really want to put the interests of the child first,” he said.

“We can't keep trying to fix families that are completely broken.

“It sounds terrible, but I think we try too hard with birth parents... If we really cared about the interests of the child, we would take children away as babies and put them into permanent adoptive families, where we know they will have the best possible outcome.”

What are these broken families? What does broken even mean when we talk of families as though they existed outside of the social and environmental context? Who decides what qualifies as broken and how? If they are broken, why not go straight for forced sterilization?

Fortunately, the Guardian quotes other voices:

Philippa Stroud of the think-tank the Centre for Social Justice refuses to accept that there is an "unreachable" underclass in society.

"I don't think we should go there," she said. "These children were clearly brutalised themselves. There should have been intervention from the time their mother was pregnant – the health visitor, social workers. She should have been seen again and again and if she had not been able to change her behaviour then the kids should have been taken into care in the first year.

"Early intervention is key. The mother could have been salvageable and retrained. Social workers come into their profession with noble aims, but before long they are carrying enormous case loads and are stuck in such box-ticking roles instead of being out there where they should be."

So perhaps there is actually something we as a society can do to help families? If only there were enough resources in the world to help Dorcaster social workers actually do their job. Oh, actually, there are enough resources, it' s just that we have other priorities.

Update from last week: SW Ad Campaigns work!

Per an article from the Children and Young People Now website, it seems that the ad campaign I discussed last week is working:

A Department for Children, Schools and Families spokeswoman confirmed that the 6,800 people who had enquired had all requested further information about a career in social work.

What I still wonder is, what type of training is needed in the UK to become a social worker?

As I noted a while back, Britain seems to be going through a bit of a social work crisis of late - more than half the articles I find online are about child welfare over there. And from what I read, the main role of social workers is safety monitoring and removal of kids.

Working in "prevention" (which means "connected to the child welfare system") in NYC, I am learning a lot about what doesn't work here, but I also see a lot of variety and depth - programs focusing on family systems and not just enforcement. Even ACS' Improved Outcomes for Children initiative (IOC) is an attempt at a family-orriented and strength-based approach (in my experience so far, its not really functioning, but that's another matter). Is child welfare more nuanced here, or am I only seeing one side of things through the British media?

More on this later, but in the meantime, maybe we need advertisements promoting social work here in the U.S. Anyone got any money for an ad campaign? Or know any celebrities?

Social Work In the news! Week 3: Re-branding Social Work

I recently wrote a somewhat rambling and verbose post about, among other things, what I saw as the difference between social work in the U.S. and in Great Britain, at least as seen in the media. Here's an interesting follow-up to that - a story in the Guardian about new advertisements in the U.K. to boost the the public image of social work, and to get new recruits:

The aim is to push the idea that social workers are often the "voice" of people in vulnerable situations.

"We hope to attract a new wave of talent to work in the profession and change public perceptions," said Karen Smalley, head of the department's marketing division. "Social workers help give a voice to many people across all ages and situations and we want to position social work as a career of choice."

The ad (click here to see it) starts a bunch of apparently famous people (I don't recognize them) acting as "clients," with other voices dubbed over. The campaign theme is "Help give them a voice." You can see the video at the link above.

It seems like a good enough campaign - the snippets of people's lives were pretty intense. I was a bit confused about the voices and the images - was the audio actual recordings actual clients recorded? Or other actors? What is the meaning of having them dubbed over video of the stars? Who is giving them a voice? The celebrities are there, but they are giving them a face, not a voice...

Am I over-thinking this? It would probably have made more sense to me if it included stars that I was actually familiar with. Is the unconscious message that as a social worker you get to work with movie stars?

It is hard to imagine a campaign to boost the perception of social workers in the U.S. - who has money and the motivation to do it? The closest thing I can think of is the ACS-recruitment campaign that ran a while back on New York City subways (no stars there though).

What do readers think? Is this an effective campaign? Do we give voice to vulnerable populations? And is that something that would attract you to the field?