CYP Now - Editorial: Why social worker bashing is all too easy

Press coverage over the past few weeks of the case in Essex where two young children have been put up for adoption (see Analysis, p9) has understandably outraged social workers all over the country. But no matter how cynically we think the facts of this case may have been misrepresented, it is still worth considering what we can learn from it.

Headlines such as "Child stealers" and "Stolen by the state" are not somuch about social work practice as they are about what is seen asunjustified intrusion into the domain of the family. Unfortunately, itis social workers who are seen as the chief agents of an anti-familystate, ably assisted in some circumstances by others such as teachers(especially when they presume to teach anything to do with sex orrelationships) and childcare workers (whose chief purpose, in the eyesof some people, is to force women out of the home and into theworkplace).

The only people likely to find it plausible that social workers takechildren into care because their parents are "a bit slow" are those whoare entirely ignorant of what social workers do, and of the processesand level of scrutiny involved in a child being put up for adoption.

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