{"id":2713,"date":"2012-02-03T13:37:19","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T13:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=2713"},"modified":"2017-06-23T11:02:54","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T10:02:54","slug":"social-workers-on-tv-where-is-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/social-workers-on-tv-where-is-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Workers on TV – where is the Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Taking a risk – Bristol Social Services<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our misgivings about child protection social workers were pretty-well confirmed last Monday 30th Jan 2012 with a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a child welfare case in Bristol.\u00a0 You can catch the next episode on BBC2, Monday night at 9.00pm (not Scotland) and\/or view episodes HERE<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Called \u2018Damned if they do, damned if they don\u2019t\u2019, last Monday’s progranmme followed a seemingly inexorable chain of events in which an uneducated couple lost their son, and then their newly-born daughter, to the care system.\u00a0 The couple went to Bristol Social Services for help, as many do.<\/p>\n

We realised afterwards that, except for a hand-out of a bed for their son, there was no help from Bristol SS, only a series of directives and ultimata which the inadequate parents would always be hopeless at fulfilling. \u00a0These lost souls needed a training course in nutrition and house-management for a start, and a basic all-round education would not have come amiss either.<\/p>\n

On ITV\u2019s This Morning yesterday<\/a>, towards the end of the programme, two high-ranking Bristol social workers, including the\u00a0one pictured,\u00a0said they were ‘taking a risk’ by allowing the programme to follow them around.\u00a0 They were right.\u00a0 Even though the family in the programme were an obvious ‘hard case’, the outcome still left a bad taste in the mouth.<\/p>\n

They reminded us of the source of their philosophy, which appears to be: \u2018If in doubt, take the child out\u2019.\u00a0 It all stems back to the Children Act 1989.\u00a0 This Act made the \u2018welfare of the child\u2019 the paramount consideration of the family Court.\u00a0 Keeping a family together is not remotely a consideration.\u00a0 For those who believe the Family has equal status with the State as social institutions of Almighty God, this approach takes some getting used to.<\/p>\n

Even knowing what we know about the dangers of the Care System (with apologies to all you good Christian foster parents out there) the Court will still have a default position that the child’s welfare is best served by being in care.<\/p>\n

So if they are \u2018Damned if they do, damned if they don\u2019t\u2019, why do they not lean towards ‘Don’t’ rather than ‘Do’?\u00a0 (This was a question that the naive Eamonn Holmes was never going to ask.)<\/p>\n

The answer is that if they ‘Do’ take a child and get it wrong, then owing to the secrecy of the family courts (in the ‘best interests of the child’ of course) no-one ever gets to hear of it.\u00a0 If they ‘Don’t’ take a child and it all goes sour, the child’s fate\u00a0ends up on front pages of the newspapers and social workers lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our misgivings about child protection social workers were pretty-well confirmed last Monday 30th Jan 2012 with a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a child welfare case in Bristol.\u00a0 You can catch the next episode on BBC2, Monday night at 9.00pm (not Scotland) and\/or view episodes HERE. Called \u2018Damned if they do, damned if they don\u2019t\u2019, last Monday’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":27,"rttpg_category":"Uncategorised<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Our misgivings about child protection social workers were pretty-well confirmed last Monday 30th Jan 2012 with a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a child welfare case in Bristol.\u00a0 You can catch the next episode on BBC2, Monday night at 9.00pm (not Scotland) and\/or view episodes HERE. Called \u2018Damned if they do, damned if they don\u2019t\u2019, last Monday’s…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}