Perhaps readers of Anthony Browne's The Retreat of Reason, and of Political Correctness and Social Work edited by Terry Philpot might be interested in my experiences as a social work team manager in the 1980/90s.

I felt/feel very strongly about any loss of our right to free speech and being controlled by the thought police and the "blacker than thou" social workers I used to work with. I had years of training courses to attend. They were usually entitled Anti-Racism Awareness. The courses never seemed to relate to anything other than race. However, I brought a two-day event to a standstill in the first half hour: the title was something like "anti-discrimination in the wider context". I said: "Good, we'll be looking at disability and age etc". The speakers were dumbfounded and the course was postponed for two hours whist they reorganised it. On another occasion a four day event was run by two Asian workers who concluded with the statement that: "White people want black people to be locked up in cages". I put up my hand and said no, I didn't, and they were quite wrong in my case. No one else said anything. This course was financed by the local social services department. I heard later that these two men had been stopped from running courses.

My other ploy which I used at every event when the speaker began with the phrase "We are all racists" was to put up my hand and say: "Excuse me, I'm not a racist - please could you exclude me from that statement?" I resented someone having the audacity to presume they knew my beliefs and attitudes when they'd never even met me. Not once did any other social worker speak up to support me. I concluded from this they were indeed all racists and the speaker was correct. It was my little, lonely, private war against THEM - the thought police.

Yet another apple cart I upset was when at a "is female circumcision cultural?" study-day, I raised the question of male babies having their rights taken away from them without their consent. It did not go down well. When I was interviewed by a leading adoption agency for a job, as I walked into the room a member of the panel (a very senior person in a large social services department) said out loud "Oh no, not another white face".

A common experience for team managers was as follows: 1) Universities accepted black people on to S.W. courses who were hardly literate. 2)These students were put into placements in the field as part of their training; if their supervisors found they couldn't do the job, they wouldn't agree to pass the placement work. 3)The student would then complain of racial discrimination. 4) The University tutor would support the student in bringing a charge of racism against the placement supervisor. Matters were usually resolved by the student (if they had relatives abroad) going back to the home country for a "holiday" and then doing another placement somewhere else when things had blown over. 5) The upshot was that the University got the credit for taking in black students (knowing full well they weren't up to the task) and could rely on the placement worker taking the flack when the student failed. I got round this one by ensuring that my team had very clear methods of recording all conversations/supervision sessions etc. with copies given to the students so that should numbers 2 - 5 come into play we were ready for them.

A specific example of this process post-stage 5 was as follows.

The failed placement student "A" (the name has been changed to protect the guilty) who had been the subject of a failed placement by a member of staff in my previous post subsequently turned up as a newly-qualified social worker at a recruitment day when I had moved to another local authority. The event had several tables each representing a different discipline. "A" crossed the room to tell me she had just been given a job by the team manager of the child protection team. (This was with neither an interview or a reference.) Very concerned about the lack of abilities of "A" as had been apparent when she was a student supervised by a member of my team in my previous employment, I telephoned the team leader who had appointed her to work in his team. I asked him if he would speak to my ex-colleague who had the experience of supervision and subsequently failing "A". I said nothing about "A's" suitability for her new post. He reluctantly agreed to this and the two of them conferred over the telephone. My ex-colleague subsequently rang me. She was furious. The team manager's response to her informing him about this person's unsatisfactory practice was: "Have you ever worked with black people?" (What I hadn't thought necessary was to tell him was that my ex-colleague is black. Because she doesn't sound like Peter Sellers singing "Goodness Gracious Me" he had assumed she was white and would therefore have based her opinion on a racial stereotype. (I don't know if this is relevant to my account, but he was white.)

Anyway, "A" was employed in the child protection team. I subsequently heard that a row had ensued between her and the team manager and he had been suspended for hitting her. Any shadenfreude I felt was overshadowed by the knowledge that an incompetent worker had been employed by an incompetent manager to the detriment of the people they were supposed to serve.

Another instance was of an unqualified worker in my team who had a long record of very poor work practice, very bad timekeeping and extensive sick leave applying for a University place to qualify as a social worker. My repeated requests to senior management for guidance in handling this problem were ignored. (The worker was black - could this have been a factor?) Had I been asked to endorse the application I would have explained that I could not, and would have said why not. I subsequently found that the successful application was endorsed by someone who had no experience of the applicant's work and no authority to vouch for them. I contacted the university department concerned and was warned off trying to investigate this by the secretary of the social work department who told me she "understood what I was trying to do, and it was very brave of me but it would be better not to take it further, as it would lead to a lot of trouble". Sometime later when I talked about this and the effects of PC on social work practice with the deputy director of my local authority she said of the universities and social work in general: "Well, they're getting what they deserve" - i.e. appalling levels of social work practice.

Is it any wonder I told university departments that my team was "unfortunately too busy to take on any students for the foreseeable future"? I believe that some of the terrible child-death cases should be laid at the door of PC "theories" and the lack of integrity and plain common-sense in university social work departments and local authorities where staff are too craven to do their jobs right. A friend who remains in social work tells me that the current focus is against middle-class social workers. Is there material for another publication here?

Cassandra

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