It's become almost a national sport, hasn't it, lambasting social workers?
While we don't like to be seen as leaping aboard any bandwagons, it has to be said that these soft-headed, power-mad nonentities do ask for it. And ask for it, and ask for it, time and time again.
Take for instance this story widely reported in the papers ...
Two young brothers face adoption by a gay couple despite the desperate protests of their mother, grandparents and extended family.
The grandparents, an aunt and an uncle have all offered to give the boys, aged six and nine, a loving home but they say social workers have turned them down without explanation.
In the past few days the boys were introduced to the male couple in preparation for a formal adoption next month. But yesterday, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind, the children's middle-class family began an 11th-hour legal battle to halt the adoption.
The grandfather, a sports coach in his 60s, said: 'The boys thought they were getting a new mummy and daddy, not a daddy and daddy. We are not homophobic, but we feel strongly this adoption is against our family's Christian values.'
The grandmother, also in her 60s, added: 'Our grandsons are being forcibly taken from a family who want them dearly. We are worried they will be indoctrinated into a different lifestyle. This is social engineering by the state.'
The brothers have been in foster care for two years. Social workers began to monitor their mother when she suffered post-natal depression after the birth of her first son though there is no suggestion that she has harmed or neglected the children. The boys were placed on the 'at risk' register four years later after her husband hit her. Social workers claimed the 38-year-old mother had allowed them to be 'emotionally harmed' because one of the boys witnessed his father physically abusing her.
That's a lulu, isn't it? The mother was assaulted and it was her fault?
The couple later separated and the mother took out an injunction to stop her estranged husband coming to the family home. However, she relented and agreed to let him see his sons. When this was discovered, social workers took the children into care in March 2007.
She says: 'The boys kept saying they missed their father. I made a mistake by letting him back to see them. But that does not mean I should lose my sons for ever.'
Her estranged husband has now moved to a different part of the country. The mother argued in a Somerset family court that a homosexual household is not a suitable environment for her sons. Her 40-year-old brother, who has a wife and child, has also offered to bring up his nephews. He believes it is not in their best interests to be handed over to strangers when they have loving relatives.
The brothers cannot be identified, but that didn't stop social workers showing their faces on an adoption website, because of course social workers always know best and are above the law.
The uncle said he had discussed the matter with gay friends, and they were worried, too, saying that male relationships do not always last very long. 'They asked about the long-term future of the couple who want to adopt my nephews', he said. 'Will they stay together? Are they in a civil partnership? What happens to the children if they split up?'
Social workers insist that the boys badly need a stable home where there is no risk of the adults breaking up in the future. However, according to government figures none of the 20 male couples in England who adopted children in the year up to March 2008 had formally cemented their relationship in a civil partnership.
In what the family claim is 'bullying and blackmail', Somerset social workers apparently warned the mother - before she knew the sex of the couple involved - that she must agree to the adoption quickly or the boys might have to go to different homes because of a shortage of adoptive parents. She reluctantly consented because she felt her sons should be kept together.
Weeping, she said: 'I would love to look after the boys myself and think I am quite capable, especially with the support of my family. I was dismayed to find they are going to a single-sex couple. Social workers just dumped the truth on me. I was called to their office about the adoption procedures, and they said the boys' new parents would be a single-sex couple.'
Although the Daily Mail may not identify the boys, the social workers openly advertised them for adoption in an internet magazine, Be My Parent, where it is thought the gay couple saw them. The advert showed the smiling brothers sitting together on a bench, their faces not obscured, and gave their Christian names along with descriptions of their character. The words and picture were removed only when the mother was told about them by friends and complained to the social workers. The mother was equally astonished to find social workers taking a video of her heartbreaking one-hour 'farewell meeting' with her boys at a children's centre in February.
The social workers said it would be a 'memoir' for their birth family. As yet, they have not received it. At the final meeting, says the mother, she put on a brave face for the sake of her sons. 'I wanted their last memory of me to be happy.' The last words the elder boy said to her were: 'I know I won't see you again, Mummy.' She answered: 'It's not going to be for ever, I promise.'
She has been told she can write to her sons twice a year, in May and October. Social workers say the family will not see the boys again until they are grown up. The gay couple have insisted the children are permanently parted from their relatives as a condition of the adoption.
When the grandparents offered to take both boys, social workers gave them no reason for turning them down. Their age was not cited as a barrier. Then their aunt, who is in her early 40s, offered to care for the elder boy, if the younger were looked after by his grandparents.
The family agreed that the brothers would be together at weekends and in the holidays, either at their grandparents' home overlooking fields in the Home Counties, or the aunt's home less than an hour's drive away. This plan also failed to gain acceptance. The aunt says: 'We are not drinkers or smokers. We are emotionally stable homeowners and taxpayers. We love these boys, and yet we were not allowed to give them a good life within their own family.'
'Emotional harm' became part of the social workers' lexicon some years ago. It is now the catalyst for 27 per cent of all English adoptions, a far higher proportion than that triggered by sexual and physical abuse. Critics say it means children can be 'forcibly' adopted if there are parental rows or even a future likelihood of them while a child is under 18.
And this argument, which suggests that social workers can make uninformed and unproven guesses about the future, is a strong one if the case of soldier Matthew Dean is anything to go by. He and his wife had their baby taken away for almost a year after a doctor misread an X-ray. Lance Corporal Dean and his wife Katie were accused of abusing Louie and were suddenly faced with the threat of losing all their three children.
The ordeal started with a hospital scan when Louie was two months old which found blood between his brain and skull. He had been thriving despite being born five weeks prematurely with a slightly enlarged head and floppy limbs. Further X-rays seemed to show no more injuries until a doctor claimed she could see a broken rib.
Louie's father, who has served with the Princess of Wales Regiment in Iraq, Kosovo and Northern Ireland, and mother were told they could not be trusted with him. It was only after almost a year of misery that a judge ruled that the blood on Louie's brain was the result of an accident and that the rib had never been broken at all. The doctor had misread the X-ray.
Southampton General Hospital consultant radiologist Jo Fairhurst believed 'there was a healing fracture' of a rib 'suggesting non-accidental injury'. On the strength of her opinion, the Deans were told they were to be arrested for child abuse when they returned to their posting in Germany, although previously German doctors had found nothing wrong.
Hampshire social services took over the case but last December a judge rejected a bid to place their three children in care. A German doctor assured the court that the 'rib fracture' was a misreading of a line on the X-ray created because Louie's lungs and spine had moved.
In Southampton a hospital spokesman said Dr Fairhurst was working overseas and he was unable to comment in her absence.
Well, that was convenient, wasn't it? Not that one should blame a doctor for making a mistake - everyone makes mistakes. The blame lies with social workers who leap at any chance to intervene in the lives of innocent families on the flimsiest of evidence. Because they know best, of course.
But the worst thing about this case was that social workers told the family that Lance Corporal Dean, who had served in Kosovo and Northern Ireland, was likely to abuse his children because he was a soldier.
Sitting in his mother-in-law's living room, Dean's eyes widened in shock as he listened to what his social worker was telling him. Because he was a man and a soldier - accustomed to fighting for Britain in war-torn countries - he was, they said, more likely to be of a violent disposition, and therefore more capable of abusing his baby son, Louie. 'I was furious,' says Matthew. 'To be told that my occupation and gender should have any bearing on my parenting skills and sense of decency was absolutely beyond belief.'
Later his wife terminated a three-month pregnancy after being told that she would have to hand that child over to social services too.
It's very much to the credit of the army that it gave the Deans legal aid to help them fight their case, and also gave Matthew a posting in Gosport so he could be near his family.
The GOS says: You'll notice that we are allowed to know the names of this family, what job Matthew Dean does, what his employment history has been, and even roughly where they live.
But the social workers who accused them and tried to break up their family, who are they? Will their names be published?
I don't think so.
It would be foolish to claim that parents don't sometimes abuse their children, and the newspapers are all too full of stories about Baby P and other cases where social services have failed in their duty to protect the vulnerable - and, to be fair, a few where they haven't failed.
But breaking up families and accusing parents of heinous crimes is heavy stuff. Social workers need to be squeaky clean when they do it, and sadly they aren't: all too often they are ignorant, prejudiced and incompetent, and those are not character traits appropriate to people carrying such enormous responsibilities.
Nor are the mechanisms they are allowed to use appropriate to the task. Secret courts in which there is no requirement for actual proof and the protagonists are protected by legally-enforced anonymity are not the right forum for making what are, in effect (and in fact, in the case of the Deans' unborn child) decisions of life and death.
Since posting this page we've received the following message from a social worker, which we thought should be more widely read ...
"I love your site. It is abrasive, down to earth and always entertaining. However, can I just go on the defence here for a mo?
I'm a social worker but I don't recognise those people that you continually have a pop at - rightly, in some cases I hasten to add. I think you need to draw a distinction between the different types of social work and make it clear we are not all power mad minor gods with pointed heads.
I work within the forensic field - with some pretty dangerous characters - and so far we've avoided mistakes or had our names in the press for any reason whatsoever. Maybe that's because we do work cloely with other agencies like the Police, probation, voluntary sector etc. Maybe it's because we actually understand our job and do what we do to the very best of our ability balancing out the rights of ALL and not just the perpetrator/offender/innocent. Maybe we're just balanced, mature individuals who actually believe in right and wrong and know about that one factor the majority of social workers don't seem to possess: common sense.
Hey, that's my slant anyway!
By the way, I am frequently appalled at the behaviour of my colleagues within the profession, so much so that I now tell people outside of work (when they ask) that I am just a Local Government Officer. Now that is sad ..."
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