BRENT SOCIAL SERVICES

Gunn Wahlstrom, the social worker in the Jasmine Teckford' case,

meets Roy Kerridge

HOW BRENT CARES FOR CHILDREN

LAST MARCH four-year-old Jasmine Lorrington died from injuries inflicted by her stepfather, Maurice Beckford. At the time, she had been officially under the supervision of Brent Council, whose offic- ers had snatched her screaming from her loving foster parents. Together with her sister Louise, she was returned to her real mother, Beverley Lorrington, who had settled down with Mr Beckford. Over the following ten months, the girls' social worker, a young Swedish lady named Gunn Wahlstrom, had visited the mother and children only once. She had called on other occasions, and been refused admitt- ance with various excuses which she accepted blandly. Four months before Jas- mine died, Gunn succeeded in entering the house, but noticed nothing wrong.

`Jasmine was sat down. She got up and began to move around,' Gunn has been quoted as saying.

When Jasmine died, the coroner found that 20 of her bones had been broken. Summing up the tragic case, and senten- cing Beckford, the judge declared that Gunn Wahlstrom had been 'naive beyond belief.

Naive or not, her behaviour conformed to a surprising extent with that of social workers in her native Sweden, as so ably described in the Spectator by Andrew Brown. Social workers in Britain, as in darkest Scandinavia, rigidly follow 'party lines'. For a long time now, the 'party line' 'Just like the Burma railway!' has been that white foster parents should not care for coloured children. One of Jasmine's foster parents was white, so this may have had a bearing on the case. The fact that Beverley Lorrington had moved in with a man may have been the main reason that social• workers decided to return Jasmine and Louise to her. 'United families' have become all-important in Welfare mythology over the past few years. A woman who has thankfully given her children away to the Welfare can expect to have them foisted back on her again if she takes a permanent boyfriend. Sometimes social workers tell the foster parents that the real mother has asked for the children back, and then tell the real mother that the children have to lie re- turned. One of the advantages of being a social worker is that, when addressing `clients', you can make up the law as you go along. The position of 'the Welfare' in law has not been clarified. As a result, social workers have evolved their own, secret rules, a 'parallel law' to that com- monly used in what I can only describe as `civilian life'. Adherence to the party line brings departmental promotion and praise. No one has defined the use or function of social workers, so the profession has clung to a Russian commissar mentality over the years.

When discussing his macabre novel The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury refused to condemn the science of sociology out- right, saying that Britain needed to have an official ideology, and that sociology was it. Have we really come to this? Those trained in sociology are indeed deferred to by judges and lawyers. High priests and pries- tesses, they are above the law. Gunn Wahlstrom's colleagues in Brent's 'Area Six' told the police that Gunn was not available for questioning, and the police went away. Later they returned, sum- moned by 'Area Six' to guard Miss Wahl- strom from the persecution of the press. `Area Six' . . . shades of 1984. I would prefer a different national ideology to that imposed by the sociologists, but the Church too has succumbed to the new paganism. Unlike Malcolm Bradbury, the Bishop of Durham and Gunn Wahlstrom herself, I live in Area Six. Jasmine's death

occurred in a house just round the corner from my own.

Now let us move to a different area, the London borough of Camden. In a feminist council flat (for the Welfare make full use of their State), some young professional People met for a few drinks not long ago. The talk turned to Jasmine's death, and the social worker rose to speak, a young girl with cropped hair.

`I think it's terrible the way everyone is criticising us social workers! Just one mis- take and we're being crucified! Our office at Area Six is under police protection from the media, you know. It's as bad as that. `Well, all the other professions have a Publicly known code of conduct,' a friend of mine said. 'Doctors, lawyers, teachers and police are all answerable to someone.

But when it comes to the Welfare, no one is over them, there's no one to complain to. They all stick together, and cover up for each other. So people have to go to the press.'

At this the social worker jumped to her feet in a temper.

`There's no need for anyone to com- plain!' she shouted. 'We're trained, we know what we're doing! You're as bad as any of them!' Bursting into tears, she fled from the room.

At about the same time that Jasmine and her sister were being tormented, I heard a knock at my door. I answered it, and reeled back in dismay. It was Gunn Wahl- Strom!

I knew whom she had come for. It was Davey, a nine-year-old African boy who had lived with us for the past four and half Years. Fortunately, the child was not at home that day. Looking most un-naive, Gunn stuck out her-neck, an expression of mulish obstinacy and disbelief on her face, and said that the boy's mother was `not being given proper access'. Then she went away. Unfortunately, instead of attending to her other duties, she kept coming back and marching into our front room for confrontations with Davey (as I shall call him here).

`I find you a very difficult person to talk to,' my mother said to her.

`Oh, do you?' she replied coldly. 'Davey Must be taken to his mother for ever- increasing visits. Before we can establish a permanency, I shall monitor the bonding. He will not be returned permanently until the bonding process is completed. If no bonding takes place, he will be placed with a nice young couple.'

Abandoned by his real mother, Davey had been passed from hand to hand almost from birth. Finally he had been given to my mother, supposedly once and for all, as his Own mother prepared to return to Africa. Although the fostering had been unofficial, Gunn's predecessor in Area Six, a kindly Woman, gave her blessing to the arrange- ment.

Enrolled in the local primary school, Davey gradually shook off the asthma with Which he had been racked, and became the Most popular boy in our street. It was a pleasure to see him learning, growing strong and acquiring the merry sense of humour that endeared him to one and all. His mother returned from Africa after a year and a half, and visited him five or six times over the years. Davey scarcely knew her, as he had never lived with her for any length of time. His mother seemed grateful and friendly to us for taking the child.

All this changed when Gunn turned up to `monitor the bonding'. She spent a lot of time with Davey's mother, who unaccount- ably grew hostile towards us. Gunn arranged for Davey to stay with his mother each weekend. When the time came for the boy to be taken to his mother, he would cry uncontrollably. Cowed by the threat of his permanent removal if we disobeyed, we tried to encourage him, but he remained tearful.

Not long after this, Davey was taken to his mother's `for the weekend', as had become usual. We waited for his return, but he never came back. There had been no proper goodbye, no bags packed. Now you see him, now you don't. We felt we had been tricked by Gunn.

At the Area Six office, where we went to plead for the boy's return, a bossy coloured girl at first tried to stop us from seeing anyone. Finally a bearded American con- fronted us. What with Swedes and now bearded Americans, I received the im- pression that hippies who had come to London in the Sixties had simply stayed on as social workers. `No, you can't see Gunn's superior, as she doesn't have one!' the American snap- ped. `We now believe in complete auto- nomy for social workers. There is nobody above Gunn!'

The children in our street (who are mostly of Jamaican descent) spontaneously thought of drawing up a petition for Davey's return, and ran excitedly up and down collecting longer and longer lists of signatures. It was to avail. I hear that Davey's stepfather is a genial person, and the boy seems to have settled down.

It now appears, in the aftermath of Jasmine's death, that Gunn has several superiors. The inquiry which has just be- gun into the sorry business seems to be dominated by the presence of the `black activist' Russell Profitt, race relations adviser to Brent, who is known to support fostering and adoption on racial lines. Jasmine's former foster home, like my own household, is half white and half coloured. That may not be good enough for `multi- racial Brent'. A Brent community worker declared that parents of different race should voluntarily put their own children into `black-dominated' children's homes. There they could acquire `black conscious- ness' (or become revolution-fodder).

None of this playing God or the Devil with children's lives can bring Jasmine back to life or even allow Davey to rejoin his friends and former schoolmates. I look upon Davey, If not as a son at least as a nephew, and I miss him very much.