PPlog

In police training for new recruits the mantra “It may be surprising to you but people tell us lies” is drummed in at every opportunity. In the November ‘News from Norfolk Constabulary’ they say “The county’s 52 Safer Neighbourhoods Teams (SNTs) are listening closely to our residents and working with them and other partners to resolve the issues they raise.” See my report of the Safer Neighbourhoods meeting of 25th September below.

These are my views on why child protection, especially in relation to the social work profession, is failing in what are rare but tragic instances. Firstly: people who go into social work as a profession mainly do so because it is about a career in helping others. The International Federation of Social Workers’ Definition of social work is: “The social work profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilising theories of human behaviour and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work.” The role of ‘social policeman’ markedly conflicts with this basic purpose. Social workers are not trained to interrogate, arrest, forcibly remove and deprive of liberty and deal with violence and aggression - and for the majority who enter the profession, these activities

Norfolk LINks - The interim core group have called it Norfolk LINk but in my opinion the structure will only work at all effectively as a series of local community networks, not as a single county wide Local Involvement Network - so I insist on the plural. The interim core group and the interim host (Voluntary Norfolk), from the end of May on made a very good start working actively in partnership with the host to set up some early strategies and policies (should have been from 1st April but the county council were, IMHO, tardy). I think in particular, the Code of Conduct produced is excellent and could be a model for others (I am currently updating ppeyes and will be including a copy of core documents there). My own involvement began in July with inclusion in the “Improving Access to Psychological Therapies” LINks group. This was interrupted by the scandalous temporary loss of my driving licence (see earlier blog entries) but I’m now back in the loop and we had an excellent presentati