The remit of what we undertand as social services is broad, ranging from the care of the elderly and mentally ill to child protection and family support and intervention. Let's focus, however, on just one area of social work and analyse its fruits - its work with children and families.
We are reminded on a regular basis that social workers are unpopular, but do a 'difficult job'. It is interesting that social workers are not called 'social servants' since their role, ostensibly, is one of service. But for whom is this service? In my limited experience, as one who has met families who have had dealings with social service, I have to say that the service appears not to be one done to society, but to the State. If it is a service done to society, then it is a service in engineering society. Their work, the work of social workers, is work on behalf of the State who funds their endeavours.
It is, by any stretch of the imagination a very different organ of community work to those who work 'in the service of the Church' or, indeed, any voluntary organisation working in the community. You see, one who works in the service of the Church, knows that his powers are limited and that power belongs to God. To work in the service of the poor is to work at clothing, feeding, assisting, aiding - coming to the aid of the poor. It is a foot-washing kind of service - a service done to Christ.
Of course, in an age in which poverty, social deprivation and want still persist despite the creation of a sprawling 'welfare state', much of the work of social service centres on the difficulties and hardships experienced within largely poor areas and sections of society.
Yet, it takes a true leap of the imagination to regard what we understand as 'social services' to be a charitable endeavour. This is work - a career - and more than this a career in the service of the State. Social workers, by and large, go into the field because they aim to do good or make a 'difference'. I have no doubt that social workers working with families 'make a difference'. I do, however, question whether it is a positive difference. They train for the role and are taught what they are required to know, understand and undertake in what was once perhaps perceived as a vocation, like nursing or teaching.
Social workers must abide by rafts of legislation. They are bound by regulations over conduct and rules which oversee their investigations. Of course, it is also true that social workers must undertake certain duties which most people would find difficult.
Over recent years, the sector of social services has hit British headlines for numerous reasons, few of which are good. Perhaps, like the Church, social services rarely hit the headlines because they have done something praiseworthy.
Firstly, we can consider cases in which social services have failed monumentously in their statutory duty to protect children. We know that Victoria Climbe and 'Baby Peter' died horrendous deaths at the hands of parents. We know, too, of horrifying cases of abuse of children that makes most in society shudder, as well as cases of neglect of children so woeful that it shames 21st century Britain.
Secondly, as if that were not bad enough, the reputation of social services is blackened even more by reports that it has, partly because of Government legislation rising from the aforementioned cases which have hit headlines, become so drunk on its own power that children are removed from parents for reasons which mystify parents and society. We have heard stories of how family's and extended family's wishes are ignored as children are placed with homosexual couples despite the fact that these families have objections. We hear, too, of cases where children have been removed from families because they are deemed 'overweight' or obese. We have learned of cases where social services and the means they have used to deal with families have been disasterously excessive.
There is no doubt that each 'case' that social services encounter in terms of its work with children and families is different and complex. In a family court, a judgment is made as to whether a child can remain with parents or whether a child must be removed by the State. However, there comes a time, and I believe this is the time, a time long overdue, when citizens of the United Kingdom must examine precisely what role social services play in society and precisely because social services has become known as a temperamental and often a rather schizophrenic arm of the State.
The Advent of Social Services
It feels like social services as we know them, have, like the poor, been with us always. But this is simply not the case. Social services, like the NHS, were created in the 1940s and really grew as an arm of the State througout the 1960s and 70s to form what we now know to be a formidable force in society. It is, without doubt, the team that every parent fears knocking at their door.
Prior to the creation of social services, much of society's work with the poor was philanthropic and charitable, particularly as the industrial revolution had increased poverty and deprivation in various parts of Britain. And, much like education and healthcare, the State appears to have taken something started by the Churches like 'care' for 'the poor' and twisted it, over time, to fulfil a certain function in society that, by the time you get to 21st century Britain loses any sense of care or love. Like every arena into which the State steps into in human affairs, the tendency is for social services to atempt to control families and even individuals.
The single most drastic and tragic situation in which social workers find themselves are those in which they, backed by the police who are present at this occasion, remove a child from the care of a mother and father or a single mother.
There are a veritable multitude of cases in which social services have removed children, newborns even, from mothers. It goes without saying that this situation leaves devastation and ruin in the lives of mothers and families. To go through the vast array of justifications used by social services for this action would take an entire book. Some 'cases' end happily, with mothers and children re-united, but by no means all.
Beyond all this, however, the greatest problem with social services that families experience is the nature of their relationship with the department of the State. The relationship between family and social services is starkly and grotesquely imbalanced. Aside from legal representation, families are without a voice in the process of social services' investigations. During a court case, of course, no mention can be made of proceedings to third parties and certainly not to the Press. What takes place in a family court takes place in secret, only afterwards do details emerge, if indeed these details see the light of day in the local or national Press. It appears that they rarely do. So it is then, that mothers, fathers and extended family are left without support or a voice even after children have been removed. Families feel they are or have been harshly judged, but not only judged, punished by the State when very often what they were looking for was support from the State, rather than what they deem to be the ultimate punishment. This severance of mother and child and father and child is made all the worse in many cases when forced adoption proceedings result in a situation in which natural biological parents are allowed no contact whatsoever, even by letter, with the child, until the age of 18.
Of course, it is not all cases in which this is the final outcome. Some families under investigation by social services are deemed to be 'worthy' enough to maintain their parenting of a child. In fact, the silent humiliation, trial and suffering of women, mothers, is made all the more perplexing in an age in which feminism holds a dominant position society as a belief system. In an age in which women are meant to feel the fruits of liberation and 'empowerment', news of the sisterhood of empowerment is yet to filter down to those mothers who are deemed unfit to raise children by the State. There can, surely, be nothing more disempowering than to have your own child removed from you, even at birth, knowing that you may never see that child again.
No, at no point in British history has life been easy for the poor and for poor mothers, but it was rare that the State would intervene in such a way as to remove children from parents and place them into care or into forced adoption proceedings. Life for the poor under the welfare state is still full of hardship. Poverty is generational, largely handed down from parents to children not by biology, but by poor education, poor literacy and the crushing of aspirations. But, at some point, we, that is those who care about society and in particular for liberty as an ideal must examine what is taking place in the 'lower stratas' of society. For, in the examination, if we care for liberty at all, we will discover much that is disconcerting. We should, as citizens, ask difficult questions, even of people doing 'difficult jobs'.
So, let's start with a most difficult question. Does the State have the right to intervene into family life in such a drastic way as to remove a child from the care of a parent and to become the new parent and guardian of that child, without parental consent, and in a manner that severs all contact between parent and child for as many as 18 years?
If the answer to that question is 'yes' then we must ask a question to counter it: Do, therefore, families have any rights at all? If a family court decides that this action must be taken 'in the good of the child', for reasons many and varied, then what does that mean for the right to family life. Has it, in some sense, been eroded, or even, for some, destroyed? Indeed, if the answer to the previous question is 'yes' then we also find ourselves in entirely new territory in terms of the State's relationship with its own citizens. We can be sure that poverty, want, deprivation, neglect and abuse of children (the latter two being, let us remind ourselves, not the monopoly of the poor) are not entirely new. There is nothing new about poverty, alcoholism, addiction, nor sexual and physical abuse, bad parenting techniques, parental indifference to children or even child murder. Indeed, the same State that is in overdrive over 'child protection' is also in overdrive over child destruction through the method of medical and surgical abortion.
Yet, there is nothing new about any of these things. What is compartively new is an arm of the State with the power to walk up to a mother holding a new born baby only to have the right to rip that child from the mother's arms and place upon the mother and the baby a court order that forbids contact with each other of any kind until the age of 18.
People are free to disagree with me, but as far as I know, never in the history of the United Kingdom has the State had such an awesome and immense power over the family as this. Over time, we have read and heard of such appalling cases of abuse in the mass media, an instrument which is itself is a most excellent tool for manipulative Statecraft. We have heard of the failure of the social services to react and intervene in cases of abuse that we are even largely thankful that this arm of the State, with its unbridled power over family life has been created, and we even believe that in all of this the State has, at heart, our own interests at heart. And we are free to believe this, for it is important to remain optimistic and hopeful, if not naive.
The problem, of course is that not only are we talking about a huge power imbalance between citizen and State - an organ which, let us recall, cannot feel or empathise or show compassion - we are talking about an institution incapable of love. The State abides by legislation created by its own executive, passed by its own legislature and interpreted by its own courts. The State abides by its legislation. It will not abide with you, or me, or any poor mother.
We must accept, of course, as mere coincidence, the fact that social services appear in the form we know it as today in the period leading up to the sexual revolution. We must, too, accept as mere coincidence the fact that as years go by and social services gain new and more momentous power over individuals and families that the State which funds it continues to promote values and morals that lead to the moral decay of society and the collapse of its Judeo-Christian foundations.
You see, what has happeneed over the past 50 years is that while society has been fragmenting deeper and wider that at any time in living memory, the State has promoted and taught its children a set of values devoid of objective morality. While society has been fragmenting, sex, in particular, has been presented as a 'free for all' with marriage attacked as an institution by policies enacted by the State after the sexual revolution was beamed into the family home by TV and radio. While all this has happened, the poor have suffered the greater share of the burden of an accepted lifestyle that condones and promotes values which destroy human dignity. I say this not because the poor share a greater guilt than the rich, but because while money protects the rich from the grave consequences of their sins, the sins of the poor cannot be covered - certainly not by the State.
In an era in which 'sex, drugs and rock and roll' are embraced on a wide scale and the worship of pleasure and hedonism is rife - a trend promoted by the State (see Sex Education) - this kind of lifestyle is affordable to one class, but not to another. The many sexual partners engaged by the rich get an easier ride in life than a woman or young girl on a housing estate left alone by a young, scared father who knew not his own father and who couldn't cope with the idea of fatherhood.
It is precisely this kind of situation - this 'Broken Britain' - into which social services step in as saviours, or rescuers - or so they would have us believe. Social services act as those 'cleaning up' or 'cleansing' the 'mess' of moral relativism that exists on poor housing estates. Regardless of the fact that divorce is still named as the chief factor of depression and a range of negative effects on persons and society by psychologists, 'Broken Britain' is the Britain of ran-down housing estates of low education, worklessness and poverty experienced in certain areas of the United Kingdom. 'Broken Britain' isn't the middle class parents who decide to divorce and share custody of children. 'Broken Britain' is deprived areas of London erupting in fire and violence, which is rather convenient for social engineers, all of whom are not poor.
We can debate until the cows come home over whether any of this is intended by the British State, but it will suffice to say this: To men of sound mind, it is abundantly clear that the State is now, has for the past 40 years and will continue to, through its own polices, present to the nation a set of values which refuses to cherish family, religion, marriage and perhaps most important of all - life. The only objective moral leadership in the United Kingdom comes from the Catholic Church - a Church Whose voice is weak and often rejected, by rich and poor alike.
From everyone and everywhere else, we only receive moral relativism, which espouses that an individual can create his or her own moral code of conduct. The only thing to inhibit this moral conduct, or to control it, is the law of the land. The State is the giver of values and nearly all of them lead to perdition. There are presented few, if any, absolute truths. Virtue is vice and vice, often, presented as virtue. Children are not taught to marry - they are taught to have sex. It should not be surprising to either the State, or to us, then, if young adults do exactly that and do it in a carefree manner.
For the rich, of course, this is party time with a few come-downs and heartbreaks. For the poor, however, this is an unmitigated disaster. What for the rich is a one night stand is, for the poor, a sexual encounter the result of which could be an investigation by social services, being decreed 'unable' or 'unfit' to raise children and for the mother and perhaps father to be nailed to a Cross. For that is how it must feel to be a mother of a child you have conceived to be removed from you at birth - a child you may never see again.
Now, it just so happens that for those with a eugenic agenda for society - one endorsed by such secular heroines as Marie Stopes, soon to grace our postage stamps, that this trend plays into the hands of those who would rather that the poor stopped breeding altogehter.
Let us recap on the trends: Firstly, social services are created and expanded as a body providing support and assistance to the poor. The poor never asked for the State's assistance, but the State gave this support to them anyway, because as every Marxist will tell you, the State knows best and is both fatherly and benign. At this stage, in the 1900s, social services is not loved by the poor for under its watch the poor are judged as deserving and undeserving.
Next, the sexual revolution takes place, a revolution that the State at no point attempts to stop or impede. It causes the breakdown of traditional morality and the widespread embracing of lifestyle that rejects any form of self-control. Into this situation is also placed the widespread availability of new drugs and 'highs' that are documented in the 'sounds of the sixties'. The sexual revolution and experimental drug use hit society from top to bottom. Love and sex are interchangeable words. Marriage collapses, as do families and society becomes more fragmented as marriages break up to the point at which 1 in 3 fails and ends in divorce. What is general, universal, however, is a permissive attitude to both sex and drugs.
Added to this, traditional forms of work for the working class are destroyed, State benefits are relied up and depended upon and an 'underclass' forms for whom work is hard to find. State dependency for benefits becomes rife. The culture of work is eroded. Educational standards worsen and decline. The number of illiterate children soars. Conventional morality is rejected and sexually permissive lifestyles promoted. Articial contraception offers a more liberalised and less restricted sexual life, but it has a failure rate which is acknowledged but unquantifiable.
All of these trends become noticable by the British State throughout the 70s and 80s and 90s, as if the British State is, in all this, watching a car crash in horror. Yet, despite the fact that sexual promiscuity is near universal, the poor are judged to be worse offenders than anyone else. For that reason they are called up to appear on The Jeremy Kyle Show to parade their sins to those watching at home - most of whom are unemployed.
While the State presides over the biggest moral decline since the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, social services interfere in families in estates because 'its in the child's best interest' because there is 'no way' this young mother is 'capable' or 'fit' enough to raise and care for this child 'adequately'. The children of these are removed and taken into care, despite the fact that social services was, ostensibly, not a social engineering force, but a team of dedicated men and women coming to the aid of those in need of family support. Now, of course, this support is nowhere, but for some charities, most of whom were started by Catholics and other Christians in defense of the dignity of all human life. The children of these families are taken into care - no matter how may children they have. These are the trends and they continue daily.
The Effect of the Economic Crisis on Social Services
So, what are we left with? We have a situation in which at the same time as the State promotes amoral values to society, the State, too, must 'rescue' children from 'unfit' parents who are 'incapable' because they are too young, poor, some on drugs, drink and often behaving in a similar way to university students in freshers year. These young parents who, surprise surprise didn't wait until they were either a) married and b) ready to have children, have children. What is more, they are doing it all on the public purse! For how long, precisely, is a society that has divorced itself from its Christian roots anyhow going to support young, single, mothers on housing estates whose rent, child benefit and lifestyle is supported by the British taxpayer? Not long, especially when Britain is being told to 'Keep Calm and Carry On'!
Harsh economic times call for difficult economic measures. While most in society has embraced the contraceptive and abortive model of 'family planning' sections of the poor simply refuse to use various chemicals and prophylactics or to use them consitently well. Cuts have to be made and it is time for the State to up its game. The cuts could, indeed, be so severe that even social services feels the pinch. Indeed, the cuts could be so severe that the State can no longer afford to lavish a single mother with four children to keep calm and carry on. The cuts could be so severe that the poor mother on the housing estate who is, in Louise Casey's words, 'having too many children', needs to be told and possibly forced to stop because, after all, we British taxpayers can no longer afford to 'pay this poor woman to breed'.
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| British eugenics advocate: Marie Stopes |
It is now, now that the dream of the wicked witch of the West, Marie Stopes, the dream of Margaret Sanger and, indeed, the dream of Adolph Hitler himself, along with the British Eugenics Society so endemic in social services and beyond can be realised in all its diabolical glory.
You see, without the creation of the Welfare State and without the sexual revolution that soon followed it and without its continued promotion in society, even by the organs of the State, you could not possibly create a class of people we know as the very poor who by 2012 become seen as a 'drain on the British economy' for the sole reason that they produce children paid for by the State. You require both of these things. You require unfettered access to abortion, sterilization and artificial contraception, of course. Finally, you require an economic crisis and, hey presto, you have the perfect recipe with which to justify measures brought to bear against them that not only mean you can take their children and give their children to a 'nice family' in Surrey, or even a 'gay family' in Croydon, but because these people are 'not contributing to the economy', you can, in fact, gradually suggest to them and society that difficult times call for difficult measures. If we can't afford child benefit, then can we afford children?
If we can't afford children, then we have to find ways to stop people having these children. If we have to find ways to stop people having children, then we have to force people not to have children. "If this is what we must do, this is what we must do, so here, young lady, by court order, I decree that I, Lord Chief Justice X, order you to accept this coil method of artificial contraception from this date until you are no longer fertile, since you have proved to me and all of society that you are incapable and unfit to be a mother. Quite why the State should support you breeding anyway is quite beyond me." All of this of course, will be done secretly, in the Court of Protection, set up, for your protection by the glorious and all-powerful British State.
Great Britain, welcome to your Dystopia. In order to believe that the State is an innocent bystander in the destruction of objective morality in order to impose a new kind of government that works against, rather than for the people, you have to believe that the British State does not understand what it is doing nor the consequences of its actions, even when the consequences of its actions are staring back in its face so much that in 2011, London nearly got burned down to the ground because of its youth.
In order to believe that the State knows not what it doeth, you have to believe that despite the fact that more and more children are removed and placed into care every decade that the State has no idea why that might possibly be - even though the State knows full well that the same apparatus it funds also teaches children to have sex and have it young (but remember to wear a condom). In order to believe the State knows not what it doeth with its poor, you have to believe that the State hasn't seen the figures at the top of this article which tell the story of what life in the care system gives to those poor souls who go through it - a life without love, morals, boundaries or even affection, severed from all biological roots and, quite possibly, abuse and scandalised by its own care workers. It suffices to say that, as is clear from the stats at the top of this page, those who go through the care system, 'in the best interests of the child', do not emerge as happy individuals. Unsurprisingly, those who emerge from this same system have children early and have them taken into care.
Could it be that the State that in the 1940s suddenly decided to steal the Church's poor and lavish them with benefits and a health service that was to become a beacon of abortion, sterilisation and artifical contraception, once it had them, decided that, actually, it rather doesn't like them at all, nor does it respect them, love them, treasure them, honour them, esteem them and that what they would really like to do with them is do away with them altogether and stop them breeding so that their existence dies out altogether? Is it a total coincidence that the membership of the British Eugenics Society are, or at least have been, all over social services in the United Kingdom, as well as in the abortion industry? Could it be?
And here is a warning - perceptions of who is 'fit' and who is 'unfit' to raise children can, like views on homosexuality, change over time. They don't change for the poor, but they can change for others. Always and everywhere, the poor are treated with shameful contempt, their rights trampled under foot, dogs treated with more care. But if you tolerate the State to be the wreakers of homes, families and hearts for the poor, when it is obvious that among those given this treatment who are viewed as 'deserving' there also exist many who are 'undeserving', let me assure you that there is no guarantee - no guarentee whatsoever - that your family and your children will not be next...for with the State there is law and there is punishment, but little mercy. For, as well as family courts, the Court of Protection, which meets in secret and which is highly reluctant to allow journalists to cover its cases, is now in operation. With power over life and death decisions and with power over rulings as private as whether a person should be sterilized or undergo forced abortion, what now confronts Great Britain is an arm of the State which has the potential to decide not only who is worthy of life, but who is worthy of having sex and of raising children. This is not the future we are discussing anymore. This is the present.
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