"there is a vast amount of money given to councils to get children under 5 adopted. Before I got involved in it I wouldn't have believed that you could have a child removed when it hasn't been abused. My son was put on a protection plan before he was born"
"When I was pregnant with my son, parents that had been through this system were telling me to run away leave the country because child services would make sure my baby was taken away regardless one way or another. Of course I didn't believe them at the time."
www.assupportgrouponline.org/apps/blog/entries/show/42961801-a-s-s-g-o-christmas-message-d
- a case from England. From the mother's own siteASSGO. Aspie and OCD with an alarming and morally disturbing story of social services constantly on her back ever since a single past event. It's a reminder of Christine MacVicar's flight to protect an adult son too.
Showing posts with label social work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social work. Show all posts
Monday, December 29, 2014
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
some progress on social work
See post of 5 Dec 2010, update added to it. Not a lot of content in social work's answer but at least by defending that they are still talking about the personal case they admitted they have to do that. Have had a meeting with them at Waverley Court with opportunity to tell them more of the details.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
a letter sent from Elas to social work
To Michelle Miller, chief social work officer for Edinburgh.
We are the local group of Asperger and high functioning autistic adults, ELAS. Our support for each other includes speaking up concerning life dangers and sharing awareness of them. We are a voice heard by other services, against any of us coming to harm, getting exploited or manipulated, in positions of vulnerability.
Hence, we are alarmed to hear that social work services now deny that it is their role or their power, to intervene against any party putting us in positions of vulnerable harm, when this is outside any services run by social work itself. You say this in your letter of Nov 27 to our member Maurice Frank.
In society broadly, it is commonly known and understood that exactly this is the purpose of social work's existence. It is common knowledge when support issues are discussed in the autistic community on the web, that social work is the party who you are entitled to expect a response from to these situations. Its function is to prevent harm coming to anyone in any vulnerable position, anywhere in society, by responding on the evidence whenever evidence of ill treatment is raised. It is immaterial who runs the place where it happens.
If this ceases to be the case, then we directly ask: how are any of us ever safe, committally for certain, from bullying or discrimination or any ill-treatment in attending any service that claims to be suitable for us? All Asperger and HFA adults are classed as vulnerable. We will be endangered, in all services, if there is not defined to be any local authority to complain to with a committal automatic duty, standing accountable directly to the merits of evidence in each case that arises. This does not require you to act as other organisations' internal complaint investigator, but simply to make them do that completely and properly not corruptly, and you to take action if they defend any distressing or discriminatory practices.
You stated in your letter that the council has no role thus. The local coordinator of Choose Life confirmed that the council most certainly does have a role, as when an organisation falls under mental health she identifies a Mr John Armstrong, "joint programme manger for mental health", as having a responsibility. Yet you wrote that the council has no role at all. Do you stand by denying his function? The public would be very alarmed to know that contrary to such factual evidence, social work denies there is any obligation by the council towards autistic adults being exposed to ill-treatment in any services run by other parties than the council itself. They will recognise it as an abdication of function.
This ethical emergency now exists, gives us a duty to let all aspies know they are potentially left unsafe in any service and always have those grounds to give against using any service, unless in reply you are committal not noncommittal that social work's popularly known role is automatic not discretionary.
Update: Anyone who reads our letter can see that it was asking for a position on the safety of all aspies in using services, not an answer to a personal case. Yet social work sent us a brush-off reply saying just that they can't answer on a personal case because of confidentiality. So there is some more to know about them, they are willing to waste a month testing if we are stupid. So we wrote back, repeating that the general position for all is what we are seeking.
From our minutes, Feb 14 meeting:
"Social Work Correspondence
Another reply has been received to ELAS letters expressing concern about the way some social workers deal with people on the autistic spectrum, but sadly it was vague and non-committal in its wording."
The one good thing we extracted from them was a recognition of needing to continue talking to about the personal case. Previously they had been trying not to talk at all, so it is progress when the fact of talking becomes their defence. That is an implied acknowledgement of the need to intervene, which can be cited in other cases too - if folks know of it.
We are the local group of Asperger and high functioning autistic adults, ELAS. Our support for each other includes speaking up concerning life dangers and sharing awareness of them. We are a voice heard by other services, against any of us coming to harm, getting exploited or manipulated, in positions of vulnerability.
Hence, we are alarmed to hear that social work services now deny that it is their role or their power, to intervene against any party putting us in positions of vulnerable harm, when this is outside any services run by social work itself. You say this in your letter of Nov 27 to our member Maurice Frank.
In society broadly, it is commonly known and understood that exactly this is the purpose of social work's existence. It is common knowledge when support issues are discussed in the autistic community on the web, that social work is the party who you are entitled to expect a response from to these situations. Its function is to prevent harm coming to anyone in any vulnerable position, anywhere in society, by responding on the evidence whenever evidence of ill treatment is raised. It is immaterial who runs the place where it happens.
If this ceases to be the case, then we directly ask: how are any of us ever safe, committally for certain, from bullying or discrimination or any ill-treatment in attending any service that claims to be suitable for us? All Asperger and HFA adults are classed as vulnerable. We will be endangered, in all services, if there is not defined to be any local authority to complain to with a committal automatic duty, standing accountable directly to the merits of evidence in each case that arises. This does not require you to act as other organisations' internal complaint investigator, but simply to make them do that completely and properly not corruptly, and you to take action if they defend any distressing or discriminatory practices.
You stated in your letter that the council has no role thus. The local coordinator of Choose Life confirmed that the council most certainly does have a role, as when an organisation falls under mental health she identifies a Mr John Armstrong, "joint programme manger for mental health", as having a responsibility. Yet you wrote that the council has no role at all. Do you stand by denying his function? The public would be very alarmed to know that contrary to such factual evidence, social work denies there is any obligation by the council towards autistic adults being exposed to ill-treatment in any services run by other parties than the council itself. They will recognise it as an abdication of function.
This ethical emergency now exists, gives us a duty to let all aspies know they are potentially left unsafe in any service and always have those grounds to give against using any service, unless in reply you are committal not noncommittal that social work's popularly known role is automatic not discretionary.
Update: Anyone who reads our letter can see that it was asking for a position on the safety of all aspies in using services, not an answer to a personal case. Yet social work sent us a brush-off reply saying just that they can't answer on a personal case because of confidentiality. So there is some more to know about them, they are willing to waste a month testing if we are stupid. So we wrote back, repeating that the general position for all is what we are seeking.
From our minutes, Feb 14 meeting:
"Social Work Correspondence
Another reply has been received to ELAS letters expressing concern about the way some social workers deal with people on the autistic spectrum, but sadly it was vague and non-committal in its wording."
The one good thing we extracted from them was a recognition of needing to continue talking to about the personal case. Previously they had been trying not to talk at all, so it is progress when the fact of talking becomes their defence. That is an implied acknowledgement of the need to intervene, which can be cited in other cases too - if folks know of it.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Advice Shop
The Advice Shop, on South Bridge, the council's so-called service for money problems, advertises in its own shop window that it's impartial. It's not impartial at all, and has now admitted the fact in the written minuted record of meetings hosted by social work about a complaint.
I have been fighting for years over a council tax appeal, which I repeat annually, which the council refuses to recognise as an appeal. This is obviously a money problem of malpractice - lodging council tax appeals is an entitlement enacted in law, and the council absolutely does not have the power it is claiming to exercise,. it does not have a power unilaterally to decide that any appeal should not be recognised as an appeal.
The Advice Shop will refuse to take up such a case or represent you. It is outside its powers, because it is a conflict of interest to pursue your fight against the position taken by the same council as pays their salaries. This they have openly said in answer to the complaint. How impartial is that?
But there is a deeper concern, for the ethics being shown to vulnerable groups, and specially to those with a communication problem. Advice Shop will not actually take this position of refusing until you complain against them through social work, and in my case it has taken as long as 2 years, from first contact, to reach this position. The type of case that Advice Shop now say they can't take on, at first oh yes they do take on. They take you on, on a false basis, but never actually engage with the council on behalf of your case. They try to manipulate you into giving in to what the council says. They keep sneaking that assumption into their advice, while declaring themselves not qualified to answer your reasons for holding that the council is wrong. If you stand by it and press them for a committal position on what you are saying, they will take a view against pursuing your conflict with the council's position, on the excuse of the worst-case legal risks, no matter how obviously the council's position is wrong, while continuing to refuse to take any position on the merits of your reasons for saying the council is wrong.
In effect this means they will side with the council, against you their client, and test your will to stand up to it. Then they will say, we have reached an impasse and you won't cooperate with our advice.
They won't do what they literally claim they will do. Indeed, at the time of accepting my case they gave me a form to sign to allow them to represent me, which would give them a blank cheque over what to do, and when I carefully added extra words to it to tie them only to uphold my case not retract it, they made pressurising noises and hand moves trying to stop me. I knew not to trust their agenda, from that moment on, after seeing them willing to try to make you sign things under pressure instead of you taking your time to scrutinise them first. This is a public help service towards folks in all sorts of vulnerable positions, doing this. Testing our ability to stand up to themselves, in the hour when we had come seeking support in standing up to the council!
I have established now, factually, through social work, the well foundedness of complaining of these practices. It is an ethically disturbing pattern of testing our vulnerability to manipulation in conflict with our own wishes.
I have been fighting for years over a council tax appeal, which I repeat annually, which the council refuses to recognise as an appeal. This is obviously a money problem of malpractice - lodging council tax appeals is an entitlement enacted in law, and the council absolutely does not have the power it is claiming to exercise,. it does not have a power unilaterally to decide that any appeal should not be recognised as an appeal.
The Advice Shop will refuse to take up such a case or represent you. It is outside its powers, because it is a conflict of interest to pursue your fight against the position taken by the same council as pays their salaries. This they have openly said in answer to the complaint. How impartial is that?
But there is a deeper concern, for the ethics being shown to vulnerable groups, and specially to those with a communication problem. Advice Shop will not actually take this position of refusing until you complain against them through social work, and in my case it has taken as long as 2 years, from first contact, to reach this position. The type of case that Advice Shop now say they can't take on, at first oh yes they do take on. They take you on, on a false basis, but never actually engage with the council on behalf of your case. They try to manipulate you into giving in to what the council says. They keep sneaking that assumption into their advice, while declaring themselves not qualified to answer your reasons for holding that the council is wrong. If you stand by it and press them for a committal position on what you are saying, they will take a view against pursuing your conflict with the council's position, on the excuse of the worst-case legal risks, no matter how obviously the council's position is wrong, while continuing to refuse to take any position on the merits of your reasons for saying the council is wrong.
In effect this means they will side with the council, against you their client, and test your will to stand up to it. Then they will say, we have reached an impasse and you won't cooperate with our advice.
They won't do what they literally claim they will do. Indeed, at the time of accepting my case they gave me a form to sign to allow them to represent me, which would give them a blank cheque over what to do, and when I carefully added extra words to it to tie them only to uphold my case not retract it, they made pressurising noises and hand moves trying to stop me. I knew not to trust their agenda, from that moment on, after seeing them willing to try to make you sign things under pressure instead of you taking your time to scrutinise them first. This is a public help service towards folks in all sorts of vulnerable positions, doing this. Testing our ability to stand up to themselves, in the hour when we had come seeking support in standing up to the council!
I have established now, factually, through social work, the well foundedness of complaining of these practices. It is an ethically disturbing pattern of testing our vulnerability to manipulation in conflict with our own wishes.
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