why are social workers biased at large families?

Question

splitting them up

Answer 1

The social services are bias full stop, anyone who has had dealings with them would tell you that. I would prefer to use the term judgemental myself, but that is part of their job when all said and done.

Often they have hidden agendas which you will not know about, they base their descisions on information they may have recieved from other areas. I think it is a bit unfair to say that they are bias against large families, you perhaps have been made to feel that way I am sure. It is very easy to come to conclusions that are slightly off centre simply because you do not have the information that they are armed with. There is much they do not say, believe me.

But, yes, they are bias because they base allot of their assumptions on statistical analasis. For example, there is more likely to be abuse in low income families, and the most likely person to be an abuser is a step-father, etc, etc. They have 'tick the boxes' criteria to analise the risk factor of a family. Oh, and as for the 'at risk register', there are two, the one you know about and the one you don't. For example, take a single parent mother, even if she has had no dealings with social services, she will be in a high risk catagory if:-

She is on a low income
Lives in a council area.
The children attend a low rate school
Has had abusive relationships in the past
Has very little support from immediate family
Friends and family live a long way off

The reason for this is because she is vulnerable to abusive men.

As I said, Hidden agendas. I wonder how much of their analasis is based on real experience?? Their analasis does not seem to take into account the people who hide behind a so called perfect life. Much happens behind the closed doors of those who want to appear socialy acceptable. I feel really sorry for those children, they do not stand a chance because they are too easilly overlooked. There is so much more I could say, but I have ranted long enough!

Answer 2

Social workers generally don't want to split up large families and would prefer to keep them together as long as possible. There are very few foster families around and there is an awful lot of paper work involved in removing children from their homes. usually the only time that they will now remove children is when the risk of leaving them in the home is too great due to physical, sexual or extreme emotional abuse. Would you want to leave a child in those circumstances. It's awful when you do have to split kids up but blame the parents for not protecting them, not the social workers.

Answer 3

Are they?

The social workers I know do everything they possibly can to keep families together. They are not biased against large families, but they are biased against cr*p parents.

And if Social Service are involved in your family, and are splitting them up, doesn't that mean you're a totally cr*p parent?

Nothing to do with family size. The council my husband works for has loads of large families in council houses (at vast expense to the taxpayer, by the way). Most of them are fine in terms of parenting.

But there's always the witless and feckless who can't make sensible decisions and end up with loads of kids they're too stupid or lazy to deal with.

At that point they go into care (and are split up because no foster carer is going to take on 7 or 8 kids at a time) and cost the taxpayer a bleeding fortune in fostering allowances.

Not to mention the fact that kids who go into care almost never get decent qualifications, and make up an enormously disproportionate part of the prison population in later life.

If you want to have loads of kids, make sure you can care for them properly first.

Answer 4

Social Workers encourage families staying together for the best interests of the children. The current Green Paper proposes more family therapy or Group confrences to work at keeping them together. Social workers should not be biased or impinge their own views on certain situations if no 'significant harm' is to the children. Anti oprressive/anti discrimatory practice should be practiced by Social Workers at all times. That is the nature of our job.

Answer 5

because the social worker lets him or her(s) personal opinion be the bases for the decision to split a large family up.

Answer 6

Are they really? Never known that. I am a social Worker and never come across such a situation. Sorry about that,,.

Answer 7

Why such a biased question?