Predictably covered by the Guardian: the awful, unregulated internets are now to blame for hurting the feelings of social workers.

As well as the obligatory NSPCC advert, this article is accompanied by a picture of Renee Zellweger playing a social worker rescuing a child in the film Case 39. A picture of Angelina Jolie in the (largely factual) film Changeling, playing a mother incarcerated in an asylum by authorities for daring to suggest that she could identify her own child, was perhaps unavailable.

But I digress. This article has the familiar stamp of the statist eugenicist, happily demonising anyone who displays justifiable emotion when the security of healthy, loving families is threatened. (Heidi unpicks this woolly thinking through the application of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Gill posted it here. It's well worth a read.)

Back to the piece:

The hounding of social workers by the press for being "baby-snatchers" if they take children into care is a predictable story.

I just don't accept that. Yes, people expect that children are removed from unequovically dangerous situations. And yes, people are angry when children are removed from loving families. Those two responses are predictable surely?

But now such persecution has taken a new twist with online campaigns by families protesting about child protection intervention.

Persecution? Campaigns? Like describing loving parents as "lobbyists" this is DCSF propaganda speak at its worst.

Nobody is protesting about intervention that protects children from actual harm. People - not just parents - are protesting about unwarranted, preemptive, disproportional intervention that seeks to prevent even the slightest, theoretical possibility of harm, including that of the nebulous, subjective and unproven from being inflicted upon other people's children. Those people are protesting about knee-jerk responses to protect, say, the professional reputations of directors of children's services, rather than children who have been abused.

A proliferation of blogs and pages on social networking sites have sprung up. In one example, a Suffolk family claim they were forced to give up their child for adoption, with no evidence of abuse. They went to Spain before the birth of their second child, who is now in the care of Spanish foster carers acting on information from Suffolk social workers.

No direct refutation of the claims made by the Suffolk family, then.

In some cases, the blogs make for uncomfortable reading.

Indeed they do. The situations that some families find themselves in are heartbreaking. But I don't think that this is what the Guardian means. No:

Social workers and managers are named and vilified,

Vilification. Someone has been reading up on DCSF propaganda speak again.

Where social workers and managers have acted unprofessionally or inappropriately, naming them, describing their behaviour and cataloguing their actions is absolutely necessary. They do not deserve impunity. We pay for their services and, much like a buyer on ebay, we have every right to pass comment on how they operate and the quality (or otherwise) of their provision. In fact, it is all the more important that we do so, because unlike the ebay buyer we have no choice about whether or not we want to buy what is on offer, or whether or not we want the unelected social workers and managers in post to provide it.

accusations are hurled at councils,

More emotive language. "Hurled accusations" or accurate and deeply unpleasant assertions?

and court injunctions banning the identification of the families and children are flouted.

Imagine the scenario. Your children have been ripped from your family for no good reason and placed with abusive foster carers, or worse, adopted. What do you do? Obey a court injunction because it's a court injunction? Or do the right thing and speak out?

According to Hilton Dawson, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, websites devoted to attacking social workers are a growing problem.

More emotive language! These websites are only a problem (and a minor one at that) if social workers are doing a job that people want them to do - and they are doing it properly. But social workers can't do their jobs properly if they are expected to achieve the impossible. The responsibility that social workers accept and the powers they are given over other people's lives can never sit comfortably in the balance with the capacity for human error, not to mention a general decline in critical reasoning skills, so well displayed by the journalist in this article.

"They illustrate the difficulties of the social workers who are damned when they do and damned when they don't," he says. "We get many complaints from people who feel very threatened by the publication of sometimes vitriolic criticism of them, and really very unpleasant personal abuse."

This damned if you do and damned if you don't argument really has to be picked apart one and for all. Social workers should not damned for failing to keep all children safe at all times. We all know that's impossible.

Social workers are probably damned when they fail to act on a mountain of referrals to save a child who even the stand-in milkman knew was being abused. And social workers are always damned if they remove even one safe child from the protection of his or her loving family. That's biology. To reduce that kind of situation to being about "threatened social workers", "vitriolic criticism" and "really very unpleasant personal abuse" is offensive.  

Managers are almost powerless to stop what Simon White, director of children's services in Suffolk, describes as "floods of information about the council that is completely false and misleading".

Some of the blogs are hosted in the US, where the constitution's first amendment, guaranteeing the right to free speech, makes them all but untouchable.

This is absolutely not my area of expertise but a quick search seems to imply that, if there was anything substantial about Simon's concerns, then Suffolk County Council's legal department would be more than willing to push forward with an action under the 1996 Defamation Act.

White's concerns about the content range from the impact on the targeted social workers and the reputation of the council to the effect the content of the sites may have on the cases and the families involved. "There's quite a lot of abusive and personal stuff aimed at named individuals," he says. "Some is clearly defamatory, and obviously we have duties to those staff. And when you get into the wilder edges of it, you are sometimes worried about their personal safety."

If the council and its employees do a sterling job then the vast majority of people will either ignore these websites, or, inflamed by the passion and loyalty aroused by the clear-sighted leadership of Simon White and his corporate director colleagues, they will jump into the fray to defend their cherished council. They will request - no insist - that their taxes continue to be extracted from them in order than they can continue to be provided with value for money service provision and, of course, that staff will be provided with police protection from the "wilder edges" of the blogosphere.

White also fears that an online campaign might be contagious.

"Contagious" campaigns? Really? If I saw someone mug an old lady, my first impulse would not be to mug the old lady myself.

Is it possible that an increasingly risk averse children's service is starting to remove more children "just in case"? Is it possible that more families than ever before face a brick wall when trying to ascertain information from councils who just use the FOI Act as a shield against scrutiny? Is is possible that more normal people than ever before are turning to the internet as a way of comunicating freely with each other, forging links and sharing information in a way that threatens the very fabric of this system's control?

Perhaps:

"If it started to become commonplace that whenever we did a pre-birth conference, families would consider leaving the country, it would force a change in practice," he says. "We'd have to be much less open with families."

Those in charge of the failing services we are compelled to fund, whether we want them or not, will become even more overt in their tactics. Yet more information will be withheld and the threat of child removal will be used as a supremely effective tool to force compliance.

One Suffolk employee who has been named on a blog says the experience is not just personally upsetting but has a knock-on effect on other cases. "Other families are aware of what's being said and they will bring it up, and that's difficult, especially when people may be making sensitive decisions," the employee says.

This Suffolk employee is saying that now he has been named, it is harder for him to intervene in families who are now aware of his practice of removing children from other families who do not want their children to be removed.

There are no guarantees. But is someone who publicly says "I do not want Social Services to remove my children from me" and openly shares intensely private and personal information about their family situation more likely to be a loving, or abusive, parent?

The problem of online hate campaigns is not limited to Suffolk. White knows of at least three other councils that have been similarly targeted, and a quick trawl of the internet reveals links to families around the country keen to tell their stories. Myths about social services – that they get financial rewards for every adopted child, or that they are involved in conspiracies to remove families' children – are perpetuated.

This gives me far more cause for concern about the conduct of statutory children's services than if a single person from Suffolk was ranting and raving on a personal blog.

If the conduct of ALL statutory children's services is not 100% exemplary at all times then it is ordinary people, not councils, who are being harmed.

Regardless of internal targets or KPIs, all social services departments are financially "rewarded" with taxpayers' money for the removal and adoption of children. Fact.

Unprofessional practice happens in local authorities up and down the country. Fact.

"The vast majority of what we do is actually allowing families to stay with their kids, even when we've got very serious concerns," White says.

What needs to be unpicked is whether the "serious concerns" of social workers are reasonable. I have been in a meeting with social workers who described breastfeeding past the age of 6 months as "abusive".

"There were 38 adoptions in Suffolk last year. Of children who entered the care system, 45% went back to their parents in the same period."

The figures are irrelevant. If you remove safe and secure children from innocent, loving families, then you are personally responsible for committing a wicked act. Every single time you do this, then you are a child abuser.

White does not think there is much that can be done about the way information spreads, but he would like action beyond the individual local authority when allegations about conspiracies or financial inducements are made.

Simon White would still allow people to blog and perhaps even email each other, but only if they avoid saying things he doesn't like. We've dealt with the issue of financial inducement - you pay your taxes and children are removed. Is Simon White prepared to go on record and confirm that no professional has ever conspired to have a child removed?   

"The profession, or the government, needs to respond," he says. "They need to defend the arrangements and processes, and put right mistakes and misapprehensions."

Why don't "they" do something? Won't "they" stand up for beleaguered Suffolk children's services?

The BASW works constantly to address the myths about social work, Dawson says. He has recently written to every local authority in the country offering to help them communicate to communities and the local media what social workers do.

It is not a myth that human beings make mistakes. It is reality. And when social workers make mistakes, they have to be prepared to take responsibility for their actions. Social services departments do not exist without the real, human people who create and fill them. Every single one of those people has agreed to be paid with money taken from people who have little control over its direct allocaiton. Every single one of them has made a choice to assume and exercise rights over other human beings. In which case, they had better be very careful indeed.

At a time when councils are struggling to recruit social workers,

There is a reason for this: the job has grown and mutated into something that any rational person would question.

another reminder of the pressures of the job is the last thing they need.

Or precisely what they need to make an informed choice.

"This work is immensely demanding, personally and professionally, and it's difficult to retain staff at the front end," the Suffolk employee says.

Of course it is. When the incentives of a secure, supposedly rewarding and relatively well paid job are outweighed by frustration, stress and misery - then staff turnover reflects it.

"Staff are concerned that the same sort of thing could happen to them."

And indeed it could, if they make a mistake.

So what do you do? Do you continue to lure more people into an impossible profession and firefight with positive PR campaigns run by Hilton or this man each time one of them makes a mistake? Do you complain that your organisation - vast, influential, and supremely protected, with unrivalled power over vulnerable people's lives - is being bullied by a handful of individuals with Wordpress accounts?

In line with this government whose officers have so readily demonstrated similarly evasive techniques, it would appear so.

(The database of local authority staff who have to do with electively home educating families can be accessed and added to here.)

Yet again it becomes clear that CRB checks do not ensure that children in care settings are protected either from abusers, or from people who are not sufficiently moved by witnessing child abuse to intervene:

A nursery manager committed a string of cruel acts against babies in her care including telling non-white children 'you shouldn't even be in this country', a court heard yesterday.  

Laura Pettitt, 27, also smothered babies with blankets stopping them from breathing when they wouldn't go to sleep, it was alleged.  

Croydon Crown Court heard Pettitt was able to continue 'abuse' for nearly three years because she terrified staff working underneath her.  

Importnant to understand, but today it's not my main point.

As a libertarian, I believe that parents should be free to raise their children as they wish, within the bounds of any law that exists. I also believe that any law should be universally agreeable - that is to say likely very minimal, and conceived at the highest possible level to remove (where possible) subjective interpretation.

However. I would ask anybody who considers themselves to be truly liberal to ask themselves whether their fundamental principles are adequately reflected in their preferences for how children should be treated.

Two irritations of mine:

• Confusing correlation and causation
• Lack of consistency and logic

So when I hear so-called libertarians demanding a return to "proper discipline" in order to rectify the problem of "feral" youths (whose existence, as a erstwhile youth worker, I do not doubt) then I bristle.

Because a "return to proper discipline" so often pans out in a blog post to mean corporal punishment, either doled out by parents or, worse, teachers. Or it is an expectation that children should unconditionally respect those who are traditionally deemed to be deserving of compliance and obedience: that is to say adults, specifically those who are in positions of power and authority - teachers, police officers, magistrates, libertarian bloggers and so on.

The assumption is that a traditionalist, authoritarian approach, whilst not acceptable for liberty loving adults, is the correct way to bring up children, simply because it appears that there are more of these youths now than there were then, whenever then was. But correlation is not causation and baying for past conservatism in bringing up future generations is not likely to produce adults who are any more capable of thinking critically and functioning independently, although I concede that they may well drop less litter.

Any approach that encourages children to rely and depend upon on an externally appointed authority for decision making leads to adults who are far, far less likely to adequately assess right from wrong in challenging situations, or have the courage to act upon their moral convictions.

I don't respect a person because they happen to hold a position of supposed authority; in fact I question them rigorously. Wearing a uniform or badge does not guarantee the integrity of anybody, unfortunately. When you elect to hold a position of power over other people, especially people who are vulnerable by virtue of their minority, strength or capacity, then you should expect eagle eye scrutiny. Because injustices can and do happen in nurseries, schools, police stations and courts across the country - so why is it OK for anyone to be given the collective seal of approval to implement "proper discipline" over other people's children? Because a so-called libertarian says that it should be so? I think not.

This is what happens when people are coerced into accepting authority:

Nursery assistant Chloe Neely, 21, worked at the Little Stars Nursery in Bromley, Kent, for three years starting in January 2006.

She told the court: 'Laura would be racist towards the kids, and call them names like "Joe Daki" and things like that.

'When they were crying and upset she said things like "you shouldn't even be in this country".

'I just found her really intimidating, when I was up in the room with her she would say about how her family are always in trouble and how they were quite violent people.'

Describing how Pettitt treated one tiny, premature baby, Miss Neely said: 'She used to shake her quite violently. We used to get left upstairs with nine babies and I could see Laura getting more and more stressed.

'Laura would start pacing up and down the room and wouldn't speak to the girl and if I asked her to let me take the baby she would just completely blank me.

'She used to try and make the babies sleep all the time and put them in their cots continously - she didn't want them up.'

Miss Neely told the court that Pettitt would cover the children's faces with a 'a blanket and hold it over them so they couldn't breathe'.

'One boy, on one of his first settling in days, was really upset and couldn't get comfortable. Laura got really annoyed that he was crying.

'She took him off me and started pacing the room and I was watching her because I was getting scared about what she would do.

'She threw him at the sofa - she must have been one or two metres away and she just threw him. He hit his face and it left a big graze.'

'Laura started saying "I can't believe he hit the sofa, he was meant to land on it".

'She said: "Don't say anything, just put it down as an accident".'

Miss Neely said she felt 'intimidated by Pettitt, but because 'she was the manager, she was in charge'.

You end up with people who are incapable of challenging authority in abusive situations.

'I know it's bad that I didn't say anything but I think it shows how intimidating Laura was,' she told the court.

You end up with people whose first reaction is to blame somebody else for their actions (or lack thereof).

'I let her get away with child abuse for that long. There's no excuse for not saying anything.'

You end up with people who perhaps know, deep inside, that something is terribly wrong, but by the time they reach adulthood they have internalised the lessons that they have been taught so many times. Saying NO becomes impossible for all but a handful of brave or rebellious individuals.

Miss Neely, who was 17 when she began working at the nursery, said she felt her young age had made it difficult for her to tell senior management about what was happening.

You end up with people who believe that youth is an excuse for not listening to a conscience - and acting upon it.

She also told the court that the nursery manager Cass Collins was not up to her job and very frequently left early and only secured her position through nepotism.

You end up with people who are prepared to witness corruption unfolding before their eyes, and yet say nothing - even when tiny children are put at risk.

Eventual whistleblower Nicola Fiddler, 20, also called Ofsted three times.

But according to Miss Neely, despite the alarm being raised no-one came to inspect the nursery.  

Describing how she saw Pettitt feed a child his own vomit, Miss Neeley said: 'She was force feeding him, pinching his nose and tipping his head back.

'He started vomitting when she was holding his nose, he couldn't breathe. He was trying to get away. He was being sick and she was feeding it back to him.

'He had a Tommy Tippee bib with a plastic tray which the vomit was going into.  

'She scooped it back up with a spoon and put it in his mouth.'

You end up with people who, when challenged with the requirement for immediate action, are programmed only to wait and beg at the door of another pre-approved authority, often an unhelpful, unwilling or impotent one. They are incapable of doing the right thing and intervening immediately when a human being is abused in front of them - unequivocally so.

Children are human beings. Treating them as such is a sign of a civilised society, not one that has gone to the dogs. To believe that they are intrinsically wicked, or lazy, or stupid, is to believe that all human beings are intrinsically wicked, or lazy, or stupid, and in sure need of proactive intervention and non-negotiable support. 

If you accept that the government is immoral in its use of violence against individuals, then surely the same logic can be applied to the "disciplining" of children. To discipline means to teach, not to punish, so leading by example, modelling preferred behaviours, and letting children learn through their own actions wherever possible is the best way to secure freedom for future generations through the very real promotion and nurturing of of personal responsibility and kindness to others.

This means not being hypocritical, which requires hard work and humility. If you want them to be law abiding, abide by laws yourself. If you want them to appreciate the value of human life, then show them love and respect. If you want them to be charitable, volunteer in your community. If you want them to understand that harming others is wrong, apologise when you screw up. If you want them to resolve situations without violence, practise effective dispute resolution in your own relationships and don't hit them to make your point. 

Or not - your choice, of course. But remember that children have no choice about who they are born to, and often how they are treated. If you favour disproprotionate and violent action or logically inconsistent rationales for forcing children to fulfil your subjective beliefs of what is right, at least until the utterly arbitrary age of 18, then don't be surprised if the resulting adults stamp on you with their hobnailed boots or fail to stand up for your cause when you need them most.

La Deech has decreed:

It is insufficient to "take children's rights seriously", as home educators claim they do. Rights have to be enforceable by an authority outside the two parties involved, otherwise one is subject to the other. That is why we have a Bill of Human Rights. The same is true of "listening to the child's voice" - there has to be a third party ensuring that that is the case.

Unless you want a situation where children are no longer naturally protected by the people who are biologically programmed to have their best interests at heart, then it is sufficient. Unless you want a situation where children are possible prey for predators who naturally rise to positions of power over others, then it is sufficient.

Listening to the voice of the child and respecting children's rights (these are artificial "rights" in addition to the laws that protect us all) might be preferable, but can it be assessed, objectively, and then enforced through legislation?I don't think so.

An example: my partner and I believe, rightly or wrongly, that it is our responsibility as parents to bring up our children to be independent human beings. We believe that our children will grow up most able to regulate themselves physically, mentally and emotionally if we give them the opportunities to learn how to do so, unfettered by the meaningless rules that bind so many people, so unnecessarily. We believe that they have to take risks in order to learn how to live safely. We believe that they are entitled to the same respect we would accord any other human being because they are human beings, albeit smaller, less capable in some respects and certainly less experienced in most. We both agree that they should be brought up to know that it is okay to say NO to somebody, regardless of their position or age, if they believe that that person is doing something wrong.

That's what we believe, and so we choose to follow our preference of listening to the voice of the child, and giving our children those rights within our family environment. 

But other parents might think differently. I happen to think that, on certain issues at least, if they think that we are wrong then they are wrong. This rarely offends or upsets me now. Sometimes I engage in debate with people and attempt to present certain ideas but I woud never, ever want to make them do differently. Ever. Because if accept that I have the right to make them do what I prefer, then I have to accept that they have the right to make me do what they prefer.

There is also the possibility that other parents might agree with us, but the opportunities they provide for their children will differ, because they are different, their children are different, and their circumstances are different. They might not agree with us on what constitutes risk, or what constitutes a suitable risk for a five year old to take, for example. Their three year old might be far more proficient than mine in some respects. Perhaps their personal boundaries are different and they might think that it's okay to spit in front of other people. Perhaps they might never want their child to answer a stranger back.

Their choices. I might not personally agree with those choices, but I respect them because other people's freedom is my own freedom. And "harm" is a difficult thing to define objectively.

Most of us, I would suspect, would agree that something in our childhood "harmed" us. But does that mean the state should have become involved? Do we really think, as adults, the vast majority of us would have been better off in state care facilities? I don't. I didn't have a particularly happy adolescence, but I was terrified by the idea of going into care. From my experience of working residential care units as an adult, I've not much changed my views.

What happens if choice is taken away from these parents? From any parent? What if somebody else with automatic powers of intervention creates an issue that they deem to be of importance to the "rights of the child" and decides to pass judgement? On diet? On leisure acitivities? Or sexual activity?

Another example. Deech happens to have a fixed idea about what constitutes education. She must think that home educated children in the main don't get one because only they are to be given "a voice" to say whether or not they want to be educated "at home" - I use the term loosely. She is clearly not interested in hearing the voices of the overwhelming majority of schooled children; just the few home educated ones. She is not being logical, rational or consistent. She seems to me to care more about people who circumvent the state system than the suitability of educational provisin for all children.

And then....

From the same woman:

Children should be forced to care for their elderly parents and grandparents to payback for the ‘’free’ childcare they were once given, says one of the country’s most senior family lawyers.

Baroness Deech, a professor of law at Gresham College, believes that grandparents should be repaid for years of free childcare in her latest speech on family law.

She said: “In return for all that grandparents do, should there not be an obligation to keep them – and to keep parents – and reciprocate the care that was given by then to children and grandchildren in their youth?

“There is a dearth of affordable child care and an attempt to meet it by conscripting grandmothers” she continued.

So this will be voice of the child revisited as an adult: an invaluable perspective unless it says, "No thank you, Baroness Deech." The voice of the child, which Deech so desperately wants to take into account unless it says, "No thank you. I do not subscribe to the world according to Deech." To finish:

Lady Deech, who is also the chairman of the Bar Standards Board, which regulates the work of barristers, made reference to the 400-year-old Poor Law whereby sons support their parents and grandparents throughout their lives, while for daughters the only obligation lasted only until they were married. This law was revoked in England and Wales in 1948, but Lady Deech says that the increased number of working women means that more grandparents are being asked to provide free childcare.

“This places particular burdens on grandparents who may need to work themselves, but feel obliged to help out the younger generation.

“They are assuming burdens which deprive them of their own chance to continue to earn a living, and for which deprive them of their own chance to continue to earn a living and for which they are not compensated, and the child care they give is no doubt at some cost to them.” 

Either:

Decide whether or not you want (and can afford) to have children.

Decide whether or not you want (and can afford) to look after your grandchildren.

Examine your own conscience to decide whether it is appropriate to give something directly back to your family.

Or:

Pay your taxes, populate the state systems that keep you in line, and allow Deech to be your moral compass.

You decide!