‘There is no escape’ — What Being A Social Worker During a Pandemic Really Means
By: Gabrielle Dixon
Tags: Interview, Children, Corona, Social Work, UK

When you take away teachers, babysitters, and extended family, it becomes harder for people outside of a household to notice the dark circles of neglect under a child’s eyes. As the coronavirus strips away support systems from families that are struggling, one vital resource has remained. In November 2020, The Guardian reported that social workers were left as one of the final wellbeing resources to continue home visits. I speak to an anonymous social worker (referred to as Steve, name changed, from here out) about how this year has treated them.

‘There was a lull in April and May’, Steve tells me. ‘Now, numbers have gone up. I still don’t think we’re seeing as much as we need to’. The loss of the safeguarding eye for children — teachers, babysitters, anyone outside of a child’s household — has caused predictable peaks and valleys in the number of referrals received since the wave of lockdowns started in March. But while social workers attempt to keep both their own and the children’s heads above water, they’ve been left stranded by other support agencies who have been rolling back services. Mandated by the Department of Education to make no changes to their statutory services, they have continued with not only their roles, but everyone else’s too.

‘It’s a difficult period in life, a period of high anxiety, being a teenager’ says Steve. One of the biggest blows to the social worker’s support service has been the rollback of CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) in Steve’s area. Aside from urgent mental health assessments, CAMHS have stopped all face to face appointments. ‘Kids are left just lingering… (they) feel even more anxious, more depressed, more put to the side, more like no one’s there for you’. The stress for social workers then becomes that children are left at risk. ‘There might be a child that is presenting as suicidal, or at possible risk from death by misadventure through self-harm, they’re not going to be seen one to one by anyone’.

Steve calls to mind what he calls a ‘fantastically horrific’ case of a young person assessed as being at risk of both self-harm and suicide, enough to need a bed at a psychiatric hospital. But this bed didn’t exist. While an adult can be placed in any bed in the country, children must be kept locally (within around 100 miles or so). The risk of coronavirus infections means services are both reluctant to move patients, and reluctant to take in new ones. With no CAMHS face to face services and no beds in psychiatric facilities, this young person was left in the home, under only the care of their parents. Steve and social workers like him have since visited once a day, having to accept that half an hour of face to face contact is enough to keep this child safe. ‘That’s particularly risky, bearing in mind social workers are not trained mental health workers’. This job extends to the parents, too; domestic abuse services, addiction help, and other programs to assist struggling adults to become better parents have simply ground to a halt.

Social work is a job that has always imposed a difficult emotional toll. I asked Steve about the emotional cost these extra stresses have had on social workers, but he thinks it has simply created a different kind of pressure they’ve always been under. What is different is the sinister ways that stress has crept into every aspect of their lives. The ugly monster of domestic abuse, child neglect, and starving families once lived a forty-minute commute away. Now, it lurks behind a study door or at the kitchen table; where ever social workers have found their new home offices. ‘It lives in their home with them,’ Steve says. ‘There is no escape’.

On the other end of the line, I can hear children screaming and laughing throughout our interview. It is no surprise when Steve tells me the line between social worker and Daddy is a door. But at the same time, when I ask Steve if he feels appreciated, he laughs. ‘No, no. I think we’re slightly above parking attendants in this country.’ (Steve has previously worked in the States). ‘People think we just really want our Christmas bonus for taking kids away (which doesn’t exist), or we’re people who miss all the things that everybody else would have seen. And let children die’.