Deidre Sanders: I'm here to build bridges with social workers

She may have a point about the need for a better and more polished media image for the profession (and there are local authorities who are actually beginning to engage with the media on a meaninful level), but that isn't my problem. This is: in as much the same way the Sun Newspaper can swtich political allegiances between the parties in the run up to the election, how can anyone be so stupid as to imagine for one moment that the agony aunt of the very same tabloid newspaper will for one moment consistently support our profession? Cynical maybe, but I can't help thinking that our national agony aunt will leave the profession high and dry when the time suits.

Deidre, you pander to public opinion. We work to make a difference. What you do is grounded in newspaper sales. What we do is grounded in values. And so I have to ask will you stick by us the next time a national scandal engulfs the profession and vilifies the professionals? I doubt it, Deidre, I reallu do.

Dear Ms. Sanders,

The forum thread on community care was not about your person, it was and is about what you, based on your own conscious and deliberate choice, have come to represent.

Social work faces serious and profound challenges and truly does not need any more patch work or quick fix solutions that only add to workload and create more bureaucracies. Social work was supposed to, and MUST be about people and social justice. Most social workers come to this profession with the hope of making a positive change in other peoples lives. However, all of us know just too well that often that is not exactly what happens.

Upon commencing their placement (be it in statutory or volutary sectors) social work students discover that social work is more about quick fix solutions, paperwork, bureaucracy and day to day exigencies rather than people and human touch. There are many reasons for this which I do not wish to elaborate here. Burdened by a crushing workload and a hierarchical system and gagged by draconic restrictions due to authorities’ media-phobia, social workers become the social slaves of government supervision and imposition rather than support and enablement.

Social workers must take an active role in changing this system and many of us live in fearful hope of the Taskforce’s final report and recommendations (hope that things could change for better and fear that our hopes could be dashed once more). We are toyed with and scapegoated day in day out by every politician, media, professionals and even our own service users. However, I assure you this is not due to lack of good will on the part of many social workers I know.

The Sun’s fierce campaign against social workers was neither justified nor ethical. As any reasonable journalist would agree that you need to hear and carefully consider/present the views of both parties to an argument. But this clearly was not in the Sun’s interest.

Your campaign (and I associate you with the campaign mainly because you have chosen to represent this paper, in one way or another, for the past 29 years) has made life much harder for social workers, for service users, for children who need our protection and has created a mass hysteria that has negatively affected local and national government budgets.

I wonder if you are willing to recognise and take responsibility for any of these negative outcomes.

If the government and/or GSCC wanted to engage the public and/or service users and/or their opinions on social work, they should have done so through engaging unbiased and reliable research organisations not yourself as a columnist from tabloid press (no offence meant but that is effectively what your position is). Furthermore, should they have wanted to engage the media, I am certain you agree that there are much better informed representatives of media (journalists, columnists and otherwise) than yourself who could have joined the Taskforce or the conference.

I am sorry to say that the “DJ Goldie’s account” you proudly refer to has more to do with the government’s “celebrity campaign” for social work rather than your personal efforts or a change of the Sun’s editorial line, and does not in any way match the barrage of half-truth frenzy unleashed by your paper during the past year.

In any case our campaign is symbolic and is meant to send a clear message to the government and GSCC that they can not continue to ignore social work forever. May I emphasise that our concern is about social work and not any single social worker. Social work as the wonderful social and civil mission that it should be, dedicated to social justice and making the world a more equitable place.

Regards,

Roberts

http://standupforsocialwork.org

Deidre Sanders has spent donkeys years dispensing sensible and supportive advice to sun readers who have written in with their personal problems - something that is being lost in the knee jerk reaction of those who don't want to see her speak at the GMCC AGM. As a journalist and agony aunt or the biggest selling daily paper in the country, it just might be that she has something of value to say about how the whole social work profession could improve it's image.
The fact that she has agreed to so publicly support the profession should be embraced. Those who oppose such a bold choice of speaker are missing a media opportunity - but then isn't that the sad and sorry history of the profession's relationship with the media.
I am a former Sun journalist who has spent the last 11 years as a PR consultant specialising in fighting the corner of social workers and the profession and I agree with Deidre's analysis of the problem that that bridges need to be built on both sides. The profession has a bunker mentality when it comes to the media which in turn compounds media suspicion and ignorance about the profession. The responsibility for the reputation of social work lies with the profession. It is up to the profession to get its message across.
Terry Brownbill

Wow, Deirdre makes enormous assumptions about who 'our clients' are that write to her. I personally think a task force is a place to understand and develop social work and social work practice - perhaps a parallel 'press and media' type of group should exist alongside but the purpose and goal of social work is not to gain public appreciation but to do and contribute the absolute best outcomes possible in a situation where often our hands are tied by fluctuating public policy.
The task force should look at change from within and have other organs deal with public love and affection. I never went into social work to be loved or respected. I want only to be enabled and supported by systems to do the absolute best job that I can. I want the task force to focus on how the systems can be changed, I want the task force to focus on training and development needs of new social workers and practising social workers.
If a media promotion campaign was needed, sure, add a sub-committee or something but unfortunately, the appointment of Deirdre Sanders and one of the reasons I personally oppose it was that it was a clearly vote-garnering exercise by Ed Balls to appease a public asking him for answers.
If bridges need to be built it should be at arenas in which social workers can attend. The GSCC is wildly expensive for front-line practitioners to attend -unlike, for example, the Community Care Live event which I understand Deirdre pulled out of - now THAT would have been a forum to attend and speak to front line practitioners (because it's free and we are often released from work to go) rather than speaking to their managers who have managed to arrange their own funding of their attendance of at the GSCC conference.
Firstly, the profession needs fixing from within. Unfortunately, the task force is a missed opportunity because it has been hauled into a wider political arena and the presence of an agony aunt who thinks she is writing to 'our clients' just grates. It isn't a personal thing of course, I'm sure she is very good at her job. It is just not a task force of 'journalists and agony aunts' but of social workers.