From Neontommy.com: Hard Times Demand the Soft Touch of Social Workers

Originally posted here.

It's ironic that in a world where instant teleportation is made possible through the virtual realm, human beings are becoming more isolated from one another. The idea of "social support" seems almost archaic. Independence is a more valuable trait than mutual responsibility.

Social work as a profession is crumbling across the Western world, even in countries where it has long been a foundational principle. In England, social services are evaporating. In America, the landscape is almost barren. But in hard times, when families worldwide are vulnerable, professional social workers are needed more than ever.

When I was a kid, growing up in the rural suburbs of Buckinghamshire, England, a woman named Brenda Romney would knock on our door every week. Her appearance through the living room window usually provoked animated gesturing from my mother, signalling my sister and me to be on our best behaviour. We would sit straight-backed on the couch and fold our hands like ladies, while our social worker asked my mother how she was doing for money, how we were doing in school and what she could do to help.

If our washing machine, vacuum cleaner or oven broke (as they frequently did) Brenda Romney would find a donor to provide us with a working replacement. When my mother had a stroke, Brenda Romney arranged for a care-worker to help clean, cook and do the grocery shopping. When my sister or I missed school, Brenda Romney would make a surprise appearance.

Once, she appeared just as my fist was smashing through a glass panel in the front door. My sister had locked me out of the house, and my frustrated banging weakened the glass. It popped and shattered at the perfect moment, just as our social worker was walking up the garden path.

Without her, and the many other social workers my single-parent family experienced, we would have been alone and, at times, lost. They provided guidance and support, sometimes by pointing us in the right direction for help and sometimes by lending an ear. I think my mother was relieved just to know that someone was aware of what we were going through.

She wasn't used to being helpless, but after two heart-attacks, a cardiac arrest and multiple minor strokes, one-third of her heart was dead. She had trouble breathing and was tired all the time. Blood clotted in her legs and soon, she could no longer walk up the stairs. We lived hand to mouth, but, for the most part, we were happy. Brenda Romney's frequent visits helped to keep us that way.

On Jan.26, Ervin and Ana Lupoe, from Wilmington, Los Angeles, killed themselves and their five children because their hardships had become too overwhelming to bear. This tragedy proves that America is facing the worst of its recession. In times like these, support beyond the realms of tax benefits and stimulus plans is essential. Families need emotional and mental reinforcement. When that infrastructure is failing, or missing, the effect is shockingly clear.

Almost two decades have passed since Brenda Romney was knocking on my front door, and things have changed in England. British families no longer have the same level of access to social workers. Fewer people are entering the profession. Existing social workers are overwhelmed with cases and restricted by increased paperwork.

The system is overloaded and the cracks are beginning to show. A slew of firings and resignations recently followed the death of "Baby P," an 18-month-old boy who died from abuse and neglect despite 60 visits from authorities in an eight-month period. The child had been neglected by his mother and tortured for almost his entire life by her sadistic boyfriend, who would pluck out his nails with pliers and beat him. The saddest part of the tale is that "Baby P" was five months away from being adopted. His abusive mother and step-father, who cannot be named due to legal reasons, are now the most hated people in Britain.

The story has caused a media firestorm and increased pressure on the social work industry.
The British government has instigated monthly social work reviews, which critics are calling a "social worker witch hunt."

One of the social workers responsible for the "Baby P" case claimed that her bosses were too busy to respond to the warning signs in her reports. Even before the office lost the employees who were fired in the aftermath, they were understaffed and overworked. The county council responsible for the case (Haringey, London) has sent out an urgent plea for the government to assign social workers from other counties to help tackle its staffing crisis.

Ian Johnston, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, recently wrote a letter to the government saying that "the lack of political support for social workers in their extremely difficult protection work is having serious ramifications for the morale, staffing, recruitment and retention of the profession."

Johnston added, "We would welcome some public acknowledgement of the real achievements of our profession in protecting children and young people."

A vicious cycle is underway in the U.K.: Less government funding means meagre pay and a decrease in the number of social workers entering the profession. The workload for those that remain increases, resulting in dramatic oversights, negative media attention, low morale in the industry and further decreases in the number of social workers. With an economic crisis underway, the social work industry in the U.K. could not be capsizing at a worse time.

According to UNISON, Europe's biggest public sector union, social workers in the U.K. spend about 80 percent of their time on paperwork. Under-qualified workers are being forced to tackle heavy-duty child-protection cases and the industry is suffering a 20 to 30 percent job vacancy rate.

I have a handful of friends and family in the profession and each one says that their time with patients is being compromised. They complain of minimal resources, a lot of stress, and a mountain of paperwork. If nothing changes, the pressures on the social work industry in the U.K. are sure to harm British families who are suffering financial hardship and emotional turmoil. The U.K. officially entered a recession this month, and families are starting to buckle under the weight. It is only a matter of time before tragedy strikes again.

Across the Atlantic, the situation seems even more dire. Are the deaths of the Lupoes symptomatic of an irreparably inadequate social work industry stateside? If only 3 in 10 social workers in the U.S. are employed by the government, and the rest belong to the health care industry, how much support do low-income families and the 47 million Americans without health insurance receive? With only one social worker for every 510 people in America, it can't be much. Take away access to social workers through doctors and hospitals, who aren't available to the uninsured, and the ratio is 1 to 1,702.

We can talk of stimulus plans and tax breaks all we want, but this economic crisis will not go down in history as a series of graphs showing a declining stock market. It will be remembered for having uprooted families from their homes and transformed the comforting blanket of social security, which took lifetimes to weave, into a tattered cardboard box. Even figures as high as $800 billion are meaningless when there is no gas in the tank, no food on the table and no way out.

As the Lupoes discovered, in a culture of self-reliance, the only option is to go it alone. Pictures of their children's smiling faces will define the millennial economic slide for generations to come.

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