Social Workers-friend or foe?

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I work with teens who have ASD and their families. Would love some feedback about your positive and/or negative experiences with social workers. Thanks in advance!

Well meaning yet unfortunate vectors of bureaucracy.

At least that was my view, however I was the exception as I generally wished to be left alone. Most of the other children came from less than loving families and really looked up to their social workers as friends, confidants, and pillars light and stability in an otherwise dark, crumbling world.

Social workers... ehh.

Well, there was one who got me an apartment after I got out of the hospital, and didn't realize my landlady was going to toss me out on my ear once she learned how "crazy" I was.

Then there was the woman who called herself my "case manager" but was really only there to do paperwork. I can do my own paperwork, thanks. What I really needed help with--things like finding a way to go to school, buying furniture (I was sleeping on a blanket on the floor for some years), or finding a job, she couldn't really help with.

One of the most common-sense counselors I've ever had was a social worker with a counseling certificate. She helped me a great deal because, instead of focusing constantly on emotions and whatnot, she helped me hash out solutions for everyday problems--practical help. I needed that a great deal more than I've ever needed to talk about my mother.

The social workers at the bureau of vocational rehab have been pretty good. They are unfortunately limited by their bureaucracy, though, and I wonder whether I will ever really be able to get through school and get a job doing what I'm good at, or whether it's just a pipe dream at my income level and with my level of disability.

All in all, I guess my experiences have been that social workers are people who are imperfect. Just like any other group of people.

I am posting this only because you asked for feedback. I had a less than ideal childhood and I had to deal with almost a dozen social workers who were either incompetent, aloof, or just stupid. I came to understand that when your job is managing children who are incredibly desperate for attention and approval, that eventually they become little more than an aspect of your job or a form that needs filled out. I despise every social worker I dealt with not because they didn't do a good job with me, but because they didn't give enough of a s**t to actually make an effort one way or the other. I'm reasonably sure you're a nice person, or perhaps you're doing research into whether this would be a good career for you, but either way if you want to still care about people quit your job immediately because it's not a matter of if your clients become a burden and you shut down, it's a matter of when.

Not sure where your from, but my experience with social workers which is many years even when I was a child is very negative.

They have no idea how to meet the needs of children with any disability, they try to fix their problems so to speak by expecting to much and treating them like they have the same ability as others. This usually ends in disaster, I wanted to become a social worker but I decided that I would strangle myself with the red tape or it would strangle me.

When children with AS become adults then this support disappears and they are left in isolation. This is the begining of a slippery slope for them. Whilst I am not talking about everyone but this does applied to those who have family breakdowns. I have yet to meet a social worker who understand the real needs of people with disabilities.

That depends 100% upon by whom the social worker was hired/assigned.

In the case where a social worker has been assigned by, let's say police or a court, often they will be biased to make a finding and render actions in favor of making some kind of change to the family unit or to the child's circumstances. Sometimes that's the right thing to do when the child is not being cared for suitably, but sometimes it's NOT.

If the social worker has been hired by the child's family or a private doctor seeking further help in placing, institutionalizing, or availing funding for special school, etc., then the social worker will be the hero if at all possible. There was a case not long ago, where a 17-year-old boy was removed from his home in California because he had dropped out of school, and fit the cookie cutter mold for a troubled wayward youth, based ONLY upon his having dropped out of school. The State didn't listen to any reasoning, and in fact the boy had left school to accept a $24/hr job to help his parents keep their house! As it worked out, the parents lost the house AND their son, when the son was only trying to do the right thing (albeit illegal in CA). Morally the actions of the social worker were dead-wrong, in my opinion. The boy could have, and probably would have, done fine with his work skills without finishing up high school at that time, and likely his family would still be one unit under a secure roof.

Charles

My experiences tell me that the majority of social workers are stark raving mad.

One of them called the police and told them I was about to commit suicide, after she asked me "Do you have enough medication in your house to seriously harm you if you took it all at once?" and I honestly replied that I guessed there might be. The police arrived while I was still talking on the phone to her and busted down my door, giving my mother a black eye. I hadn't called her to discuss suicide; I'd called her to discuss my hurt feelings about finding out one friend of mine had been telling lies about me to another friend.

Another social worker, who had newly married my husband's dad (I guess that made her my mother-in-law?), refused to allow him to speak on the phone to anyone without her being on the other line to control what he could say, and she frequently would order him to say something or other to the person on the line, whether he wanted to or not. She held mandatory family "group sessions" which nobody wanted, in which she presided over unwanted discussions about the personal problems of people in the group. If people refused to do it, she'd go lock herself in the bathroom, even in other peoples' homes, and refuse to come out for hours even if other people had to use the toilet.

Another one was convinced that I was smoking crack while I was pregnant, and kept trying to trap me and trick me into admitting it. I'd only called her in the first place to ask if there was any risk to my unborn baby from having consumed one hash brownie by accident. The only reason I ate it was that my roommate made hash brownies for the first time and never told me they were not normal brownies, so I had no idea I'd accidentally taken drugs till after the fact. Despite my explaining this, and my concern about that one brownie, she continued to treat me as if I were a hard core drug addict and didn't care about my baby and should have it taken from me.

One of them decided that I was anorexic and didn't love my unborn child because I failed to gain significant weight during my pregnancy. I explained that I was forced to work in an evil dental office where I was bullied so badly that I felt too anxious to eat, and really couldn't even swallow food or keep it down due to overwhelming stress levels, plus they forced me to work through every lunch break. I couldn't quit the job either, because I was short of work weeks to qualify for maternal leave pay. I couldn't live on zero income, and I couldn't go find a different job at that advanced stage of pregnancy. But she said that was all nonsense and that I wasn't eating because I was "just playing power games with her". For this reason she put me on a watch list for potential child abusers and they kept expecting me to mistreat my baby.

I don't think I've ever had an experience with a social worker which was not ridiculous and thoroughly unhelpful. It seems they typically have poor listening/comprehension skills and enjoy asserting their power over others.

I work for a community non-profit supporting an adult population who have diagnosis of MR/and or autism. (I am on the spectrum too).
My experince with advocates (social workers and such) has been that there are far too many folks that seem like they are too busy patting themselves on the back for helping these pitiably wretches, to notice that they aren't helping anything but thier own ego. Often this goes along with appling methods in a cookie cutter mannor that meets the letter of the law but misses all of its spirit.

Read this and decide how much good social workers are:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/0 ... _negl.html

ruveyn

I've no experience of children's or older people's services, but have met a mental health social worker who positively revels in his power to mess with people's lives whether his involvement is wanted or (preferably) not. It's difficult to believe that such people are not doing far more harm than good.

mia_rose - what are your views on the Hillingdon v Neary judgement? And in places like Winterbourne View do you just place people there and walk away or do you have any ongoing responsibility to ensure people are being cared for appropriately and not mistreated?

idk really depends on motives and intent depends whether they send prople to facilities where they get abused or help in home.

I would do my best not to get involved with one. If I did I would keep my mouth shut only giving very guarded one or two word replies. No telling how one of these people could ruin your life trying to do what they think is best for you.