by
Charles Pragnell
The
radical proposals in the Green Paper Every Child Matters clearly
indicates that child protection social work has lost its way and
is in urgent need of reform. However, it is not just social work
which has lost its way but the whole state machinery for providing
welfare and support to the poor and those experiencing difficulties
in their social functioning. Health and education services have
experienced the same loss of direction.
The
central question is : How far should the state intervene or interfere
in
the lives of citizens?
Social
work had its early roots in the alms-givers of the early 19th Century,
which was bureaucratised into the Poor Law system. This brought
state resources into the lives of ordinary people but also brought
bureaucratic control into their lives for the first time.
And
this was increasingly the role of social work. A need was identified
and
the state responded to help and support, but also to control, and
this has been the continuing story : increased state support equals
increased bureaucracy equals increased bureaucratic control.
In
many ways this has been necessary and positive in providing help
to those
in need, but it has also been insidious in that it has relieved
individuals of responsibility for themselves and given the bureaucrats
immense powers over individuals.
The
charitable givers became completely embedded in the bureaucracy
after the Second World War and in the 1950 and 1960s began to assert
themselves with their new status and the powers given to them by
legislation. Many recognised however that the problems faced by
people were endemic in the social structure and disadvantage had
a social causation, mainly in the limited opportunities available
to poor educational achievers, low income groups, and those with
chronic illnesses / disabilities.
So
a movement began in the late 1960s and early 1970s of community
workers, who defined their task as empowering communities to take
control of their own environments and demand services and amenities
such as improved educational opportunities, housing, welfare benefits,
health facilities etc. This of course became a threat to the political
controllers and the bureaucracy, who were quick to respond and to
destroy the community support movement and pull social work back
under control of the bureaucracy.
Throughout
the 1980s and 1990s the bureaucratisation of social work
increased and their capacity for individual decision-making based
on their
personal knowledge of people's lives and situations was withdrawn.
It is notable that child protection decisions are now made by meetings
or by senior managers - decisions which would have been made by
the individual workers in
the 1960s.
The
bureaucratisation of social work is now complete. Report writing,
attending meetings, and other administrative tasks are now given
absolute
priority and direct client contact time is minimal.
Child
protection social work has become a reporting function, whereby
the
worker collects and collates information (reportedly often fabricating,
embellishing, and distorting such information in the course of collecting
and
collating it) and delivers the information to the bureaucracy to
decide what
sanctions are to be applied in each case.
The
frightening aspect to this whole process is that decision-making in
child protection is based solely on written reports without the persons
making such decisions ever meeting the child or the parents and gaining
some
insights into their personalities and attributes. Such reports invariably
concentrate on the negative aspects of the family functioning and
rarely, if
ever, list the family's and the child's strengths. It is rather like
forming
an opinion on a press report on a family in The Sun or a similar newspaper.
This
is why parents frequently report that they are not allowed to speak
at child protection conferences or that what they say is studiously
ignored. They are a threat to the bureaucratic decision-making processes.
This
is also why the system has become so punitive toward parents and
families. Bureaucratic decision-making is completely de-personalised
and
does not take into account personal attributes and the level of
willingness to change and improve.
The
only possibility therefore for redeeming the child protection system
is
by reducing state (bureaucratic) control of the process, but the
Green Paper
is taking things in the other direction by increasing bureaucratic
control of child protection procedures, and the major element in
this increasing bureaucratic control is the proposed national database
of children and families.
Decision-making
in child protection will then be computer-generated and will often
be based on flawed, out-dated, and inaccurate information with no
consideration of the personal attributes and abilities of the children
or families involved.
The
end game of bureaucratisation will have been achieved.
