Usually, when a State body claims the increase in this or that phenomenon within its area of responsibility is due to X or Y, some degree of transparency enables the assertion to be checked. Not so with social workers.
Here, there is no transparency, no accountability, no monitoring, no checks or balances.
So when the HSE, through its social workers, suggests that there are, for the first time, more than 5,000 children in State care because of increasing poverty, single parenthood and growing addiction problems, the proper response of a healthy democracy would be to ask, "Why should we believe a word you say?"
Instead, we swallow without a murmur the prognostications of an unaccountable bureaucracy, pausing only to wonder about the regional disparities. (Figures published last week indicate that children are nearly twice as likely to be taken into care in the east as the west. The varying levels of investment in family support services is advanced in explanation.)
Another possibility stares us in the face: social workers are out of control. Since the most likely cause is a rampant and illogical ideology, the regional disparity becomes comprehensible on the grounds that, generally speaking, the west remains marginally more level-headed and commonsensical than the PC-dominated east.
It is rare indeed that we get to observe how social workers operate, but when we do we invariably become so shocked by what emerges that we cling to the notion that the case in question is an aberration.
Last year, rare media coverage enabled the public to briefly glimpse the tactics of HSE-ordained social workers, when a family had its children taken into care after the father expressed frustration to a social worker on account of the lack of State support in caring for his children. For nearly a fortnight, the family was frustrated by faceless HSE automatons until a court had the decency to send the children home. I pointed out then that, although there is no system of public accountability by which social workers can be called to book, the State continues to extend them powers that, if allowed to a police force in combating terrorism, would provoke huge social protest.
Social workers or their representatives frequently respond to this assertion by pointing out that they are required to hold case conferences involving key individuals who know the circumstances of the family under observation. The fact that social workers believe case conferences render them in any meaningful sense accountable is a measure of their detachment from reality. Case conferences are initiated by the HSE, which not only decides who should attend but also functions in each case as presiding judge. In one case (in the west of Ireland) such a conference was held in advance of an application by the HSE for a barring order against a man whose wife was ill and who himself had sought the financial assistance of the HSE in caring for his children. Several of those invited to the conference, including the family GP, declined to attend, believing it unnecessary. The principal of the children's school attended and vigorously argued that the social workers were behaving inappropriately. He was ignored. Of those present, only the social workers said an intervention was necessary.
The intervention proceeded and the children were eventually taken into care. This suggests that case conferences are used to "legitimate" the use of care orders as an option of first resort, rather than for use in extreme emergencies as the law stipulates. Investigations into social workers are rare, but two reports into the treatment by social workers of fathers represent a devastating indictment of an increasingly insidious and dangerous profession. Two years ago, the Family Support Agency reported that social workers had with impunity effected the exclusion of fathers from the lives of children on the basis of such emblems of parenting ability as accents, tattoos, shaved heads and bulked-up physiques.
Related conclusions were reached in a more recent report conducted by an external review group after complaints by a non-custodial father (in the east this time) against the HSE. The father claimed that he had been improperly excluded from discussions concerning his daughter's welfare. "It appears to us," the report concluded, "that this issue of including fathers in treatment options was not the norm at the time. There was no knowledge as to the rights of non-custodial parents. Whilst there has been a wish to have men more involved in services for their children, practice has grown among health professionals whereby they are not surprised if a father does not attend, and they have learned to work with mothers. In some ways this has made practice easier and in some ways less complicated and it will take time for services to both change their outlook and equip themselves to deal with the new reality".
So there you have it: the most unfettered power available to any government agency is governed not by law but by ignorance, prejudice, policies deep-fried in a rancid ideology, negligence and the agendas and convenience of faceless officials who are, as I said, completely out of control.