Sir: As usual with the media, Alasdair Palmer's article gives
a totally one-sided, unfair view.
Journalists and reporters are forever out to portray social workers as the big bad bully boys, and never miss a chance to knock the Social Services, making out that they march in with no care or consideration every time the going may be getting tough. How ignorant can they get?
What this article, and others like it, never, ever do, is to give the underpaid, overworked, understaffed social workers a pat on the back and thank them for doing jobs and dealing with crises which half the public don't even know happen, and wouldn't know how, or want to deal with them, if they did.
What is never, ever mentioned are the enormous cutbacks going on the whole time, and the continuing and senseless lack of funding from Central Government for the Social Services. The whole system is cracking and crumbling beyond repair for want of funds, and still everyone expects social workers to work miracles. Very specialist skills are needed for cop- ing with these overwhelmingly sad and cruel family problems. There is no fund- ing for courses or training, and recruit- ment from an already overstretched ser- vice is difficult. I write as the mother of a social worker in Bristol.
Gillian H. Preston
Cokes Green, Mead End Road, Sway, Lyrnington, Hants
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