Lately there has been a great deal on the news about social workers. The primary ones in focus are those involved with children. I believe that genuinely most of them perform their jobs the best way they can. I know that is not a job that I would want. I wouldn’t want to make some of the harsh decisions that they do. I would imagine it takes a special type of person to be a social worker. I have had a few experiences with social workers, some not quite pleasant.
In 2010, Bob and I were invited to a meeting with social services regarding my twin grandsons. It was imposing as we all had to sit around a large table to listen and talk. There were a lot of different workers present. There were social workers, the children’s teachers, and it appeared there may have been others of some authority.
I must have appeared worried and frightened, although deep down I wasn’t. I think I was concerned for my grandchildren, as you would be. But I wasn’t intimidate or scared what-so-ever. I was used to social workers. I had a social worker growing up. I remember I was four years old and when things went from bad to worse Mr. Sonny Ward, my social worker would appear every day.
He was a very kind and gentle man. He was a special a kind support of social worker. You could tell that he had feelings for his job and knew what it meant to the families and children involved. I always felt safe whenever he was around.
In those days he did not have the authority that they have now. There wasn’t much he could but he did put my abusive grandfather in his place. I wish that the social workers that Bob and I were involved with had been more like the good man Sonny Ward.
These meetings carried on every six weeks for quite some time. Generally, the meetings were informational and the specialist were trying to find the best course of help for my grandchildren. I never received any negative connotations now was anything nasty ever said about me.
We were allocated a very young inexperienced social worker named Jenny Pownell. Jenny had just recently finished her courses and was a qualified social worker. I believe that we were her first case. She was very young and very girlish. I didn’t think twice of her age in fact I naïvely thought that because she was newly qualified she would have been very supportive to my family’s needs.
Jenny was ever so nice to the children and Bob. She was also quite chatty with Bob’s sister. When she spoke to me however, she was always different. Even her tone of voice was off. She would always snap at my comments with a retort. Usually, it was a bit sarcastic and most certainly quite short. One example was the time that I had explained to her that I was concerned that a friend of my daughters was taking heroin. She snapped back at me and said “Lots of people take heroin!”. One other example was when she snapped at me while visiting our home. She asked me why I was late to an after-school club. I explained to her that I was working late the night before. She immediately responded and snapped and told me that she also had worked nights before qualifying and its no excuse. I felt like saying to her “But you went to bed and here I am looking after two boisterous 10-year-olds.”
I can only describe Jenny Pownell as demeaning and anxious. Nothing in this world could prepare me for the Section 34 that Jenny had written. Each and every section, she took painstaking time to criticize me. She called me a liar, she said that I was manipulative, she had written that Lorraine Riggs the kinship care worker had fed back to her that I had sent the children to school dirty, filthy and stinking. I was devastated and suffered terribly.
I just could not stop crying. I wrote several letters of complaint to the complaints team in Winchester. They did nothing. I went to see Jenny Pownell and her manager Jasmine Grimshaw. I was in such a distraught state of mind at the time. I couldn’t believe it, Jasmine Grimshaw looked straight at me and said to me “You got what you deserved, because the way that you behave in front of professionals.”
I almost collapsed as Jasmine Grimshaw’s nasty comments had triggered off all the trauma that I had suffered in my childhood.
Quite frankly, I became 10 years old all over again. All of the abuse that I endured for years, that even turned into sexual abuse came flooding back to me. It wasn’t good, a very traumatised 10-year-old caring for two traumatised 8-year-old boys. To add insult to injury the social worker had written that my husband was white and that the boys were white however I was African Caribbean. This was a wrong assumption on my race and this had also upset me greatly. I would have preferred if she had asked how I would I liked to describe myself.
It was obvious that the feedback that Lorraine Riggs fed back to Jenny Pownell was a fabrication. Lorraine claimed that she attended a meeting with one of the other grandparents. She explained that they had told her that I had sent the children to school dirty, filthy and stinking and that they had disclosed this information to my daughter.
I was friends with the grandparents that attended the meetings and Lorraine Riggs only ever came to one meeting. In fact when I asked the other grandparents none of them even knew her, let alone speak to her regarding me. Not only did the grandparents explain this to me, but my Grandchildren’s Headteacher was also at the meeting in question.
I couldn’t believe that Lorraine Riggs, a professional could have lied about me. I thought that, because of my interaction with Sonny Ward, I would have had a better experience with these social workers. This experience did alter my idea of social workers, and it did play havoc with me.
After seeing what Jenny Pownell, Lorraine Riggs and Jasmine Grimshaw are capable of I now know that certain social workers have the power to do as they please. I on the other hand was absolutely powerless. Amazingly, the judge summed it up, and he himself stated that the social workers were far too critical of me and not enough support was being given to me.
The words that social workers tend to use also seem to be of a hidden nature. They use fancy names that can have multiple meanings. For example, the social worker kept mentioning my presentation. I thought that she was undermining my wardrobe and referring to my clothes. But eventually I came to understand that she meant my mental being.
If Jenny had taken a moment to get to know me, and asked some questions of compassion I would have told her the stories of the trauma and abuse I sustained in my younger life. I did however tell Lorraine Riggs my whole life story, so it is no surprise that she decided to abuse me. While we were sitting around the table at the meeting, I looked around and thought to myself that I must be the only here who actually has real life experience with child abuse and neglect. Growing up I had to live my whole childhood with abandonment, sex abuse, and mental abuse.
I would like to highlight that, as much as the pain I suffered most recently with these social workers, I believe that we do need social workers. They are an important cog in our society who keep families in balance, and those who need them. Since family courts tend to be closed it is difficult to ascertain where they receive a lot of their information about cases at hand. I think that the use of third party information should be limited or stopped all together. Many times, third party information, from those outside the case is hearsay. In criminal court hearsay is not accepted.
My family structure in England is very limited. Bob, Hayley, and Bob’s parents tried their best to help me. I was so distraught that I had a challenge to overcome the audacity of social services. There was no need to treat me this way. Not only did I suffer but my grandchildren suffered as well.
Moving forward, the further away in time I get from the social workers the better I am. I hope that the message gets heard. They need to be taught not just facts and figures in the books, they need to learn compassion, empathy, and understanding. For some those skills can’t be taught, and probably they will never learn.