Child Abuse and Protection

I just listened to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, on the topic of child protection, and the related role and value of social workers. There was some positive points in the programme, about social workers working in or with schools, safeguarding children against abuse from a brother or sister, parenting skills for bad parents, and that experience with children for social workers was important..

My main criticism of the programme, is that is overall, it only focused on the functions of social workers, and didn’t look at their psychological attitudes, towards things like preventing or surviving child abuse. Aside from the extreme idealism, of the establishment media, the public and other mental health services, know very well that social workers are authoritarian, and have all the character traits and complexes, of the authoritarian mind-set.

What is so wrong about the entire adult education, and professional training system, is that it only looks at lay people’s psychological problems, but does not also try to analyse and understand (or even acknowledge) the psychological problems of people in authority. I’m not advocating abolishing authority, but until this changes about the system, that we openly acknowledge that the character traits and mind-sets of authoritarianism, are social and mental health problems, we will never progress as a human race, society, or world.

To give a couple of examples, of the bad attitudes of social workers towards abuse survival, when I told my social worker I was abused as a child, throughout my childhood and early teens, she accused me of lying. When I did convince her that I had been abused as a child, she said maybe the person was right to abuse me. I don’t believe that this was an individual case, but rather that these attitudes were indicative of her profession. The comedienne Jo Brand, said that she was bullied by her older brother, and that her mother, who was a social workers, let him do this.

Another criticism I had of the programme, is that by the examples it gave, it gave the impression that only men abuse children, and that all abuse is either physical or sexual. Whilst psychical abuse, often goes along with emotional and mental abuse and cruelty, as it did when I was abused as a child and teen, we need to also acknowledge that emotional and mental abuse also causes physical pain, in much the same way that mental illness does, because the mind is connected to the body. When I was repeatedly physically and emotionally abused as child, made to cry, and then made to suppress all my emotion (I was violently attacked for being happy, sad, or expressing any emotion), I had very severe pain in my eyes, head, stomach, and chest, from crying and made to repress pain and emotion.

We need to understand that some woman do abuse children, because the system gives more rights to women who abuse children, than it gives rights to abused children or abuse survivors, and this is all a consequence of women’s rights, in some ways, going too far, and becoming imbalanced in society. I have been in psychiatric hospital twice as a patient, and yet the person who abused me has never been diagnosed with a mental illness. The other thing, is that the version we have of women's rights, mostly serves middle-class women, but does not liberate working-class women from sexual slavery and being house-bound. These are social and political issues, which cannot be solved by social work alone.

The programme also didn’t say, what happens to abused children when they are removed from families. Are they put into care homes where they are further abused? Or are they fostered in places, where foster parents, don’t have to take parenting or child development classes? I spoke to a fellow psychiatric survivor recently, and she made a good point that Childline needs to be more promoted and funded by the government. The other point, is that the programme focused on children’s protection, but did not focus on children’s rights. We need to create environments or outlets, where a child can speak out if she or he is abused, and listen to children and their wishes. This means a cultural change, where we eradicate the master-slave mentality and behaviours that adults often have towards children.