Gluteus-ginglymus distinction

Sometimes I wish I’d put Devil’s Kitchen’s favourite present participle between They’re and Joking in my blog’s name.

This is from the Social Work Blog.

Well done to the child protection social workers of Cheshire West and Chester and their managers who gave the BBC's One Show access to film what they do.

Well done also to the anonymous parents who allowed some elements of their case to be shown on TV and who were willing to talk in a positive way about their experiences. Of course the report raised the Orkney, Cleveland and Baby P scandals, but only in context, and I think this was greatly outweighed by the day-to-day reality of a child protection office being seen on prime time TV, even if it was only for 5 minutes.
You can watch the report at the link above.

I wonder if they’re as competent in the sink estates and the satanic abuse-riven ‘respectable suburbs’ as they are at linking?

Hmm, when you wish upon a star…

I for one am not going to go to any great length to find a similarly in-your-face inquisition of our social worker pals from such a couple of catalogue-clad political mediacrats as Peter Capaldi got in this nail-biting and soul-searing interrogation.

Perhaps by the time you read this they’ll be interviewing Sarah Brown about her poetry or accompanying a Labour Minister in the One Show’s occasional series: A Day In The Life Of An Honest Politician And How European Directives Are Made Into UK Law Without The Use Of A Safety Net Or Parliamentary Supervision..

Oh, it’s Twiggy now, at the time of writing.

WARNING

People with pulmonary complaints and hernias might like to avoid following the link in the next paragraph as hysterical laughter has been know to worsen the effects of serious illnesses and to bloodily open old wounds.

Still, if social workers need to raise their profile in the wider context, and ignoring all those highly exceptional cases when they utterly ignore the evidence of their eyes and all advice contrary to their present beliefs about a given case, then why not nip over to their blog’s We Are The World happy page and read the Good News, O brothers and sisters?

Let’s see what they’ve got.

Ah.

There’s this cheerful notice:

There was a time when former prime minister Tony Blair could easily summon an interview with almost any leading media outlet around the world. Yet there was one vitally important publication that remained aloof: Take a Break. Now, the weekly real-life magazine is offering the social work profession an opportunity it denied the former PM.

Aside from perhaps a little vicarious snobbery there (interview the Prime Minister? Pshaw! Let’s go to Pampered Pets in the High Street for their take on the Iraq War), it’s irresistibly tempting to speculate here and now how the ‘mum’s’ magazine, consisting as it does of food voucher competitions, recipes and a bingo lounge, and which asks: Sell us your story! Complete the form below and you could earn up to £1,000! …Love and betrayal, loss and sin. Use our on-line story form as a guide. You only need to send us a brief outline, although you can include much more if you wish.. and which features such prestigious links: as Wedding Dress Day; Send us your Brainwaves (!) ; Breast Reduction Alliance; Toyboy Pledge; Fate & Fortune Website ; Spirit & Destiny Website, will handle some of the problems of the public’s perceptions of social work in today’s Britain.

Children dragged away in a pre-dawn raid? What to wear to look cool and professional at the committal sessions?

Reflex anal dilation: is it the new Reiki?

Washday Nightmares! We help you beat the most stubborn stains: blood, faeces and even chocolate.!

Onto a winner there; those media-savvy social workers.

With titans of the press like that on their side, why I expect that the career dreams of little Chevonnetta-Peach at Monteguano Towers and young Lucius at Badger Park will change from crack whore and First Minister Of State and into Cafcass drone and Abuse Co-ordinator any day now.

And then there’s this masterpiece, used quite without irony.

As Joanna Lumley will tell you following her recent success over settlement rights for Gurkhas, individuals can make a difference.

And you don't have to be famous either. From universal suffrage to the rejection of animal testing on cosmetics, many legal and societal changes have been a direct result of people power.

Public perceptions of social work are no different. Negative media coverage and low public esteem may seem ingrained. But they can be altered - if enough social workers speak out.

I can see it working straight away, can’t you? All they have to do is find is some magic ingredient that will inspire the British public to view the profession that helped Victoria Climbié to an early grave with the same gratitude and affection in which they hold those gallant Nepalese soldiers (and future citizens), the Suffragettes in all their tragic glory, and the people who kept Bright Eyes’ eyes bright without a shampoo dropper.

And that’s all it’s going to need, my proud beauties; (994 of you in the last month alone), to make us take to the streets with petitions and marching bands and loud cries of:

‘Ayo Haringey!’ and ‘Votes for lentils,’ and ‘What do we want? Dangly bead earrings! When do we want them? Right after decaffeinated Diet Coke break!’

With a reality-based profession as on the ball PR-wise as that, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, there’s this…

'Social workers betrayed me,' reveals foster mother who says they failed to mention teenager's violent past…

The day foster carer Maria Jones welcomed a troubled 16-year-old teenage single mother into her home, she had no way of foreseeing the devastating consequences...

Foster mother Maria Jones said her life was ruined after social workers failed to mention the violent past of of teenager she cared for…

But because of a devastating failure by social services, a baby almost died and Maria has lost the fostering job she loved….

Within a year of Jane arriving at Maria's three-bedroom house in the South of England in 2007, the baby of another teenage girl was critically ill in hospital.

Jane was arrested after police found high levels of table salt in the baby's powdered formula milk…

The records that were withheld from Maria show Jane was more than capable of the callous act…

One member of staff had recommended that a team of social services, police and medical health professionals monitor her closely because - in a chilling prophecy, given what happened just 12 months later - he feared she was capable of killing a baby…

'But all I was told when they asked me to take her was that she had a bedwetting problem - I later found out she did this deliberately...

'She'd threatened one resident with a knife and another with a fork. She was also suspected of spiking another resident's drink so she could have sex with him.

'Why wasn't I made aware of any of this? Why wasn't I told Jane was promiscuous and had slept with more than 100 men, had several venereal diseases and feared she had HIV?’

Order your Social Workers; Keeping it real since the last funeral badges at eBay now.

NNW

Oh, and as a special cut-out-and-keep Summer Special bonus prize, let’s see a very magical part of that Orkney child abuse thing again, shall we?

Objects suspected of being used in Satanic rituals were seized and 9 children were taken into care. One child was Jewish, and her parents requested that she be fostered by Jews, but the request was ignored.

Just think of the sheer genius it takes to find anyone Jewish at all on a tiny island in a remote sub-Arctic archipelago whose total population rose from 19,222 in 2001 to a round 20,000 in 2002 and then to foster them with Homer and Marge just in time for Pork Chop night.

First of 3 posts uploaded remotely from on holiday. Enjoy?