Removing a child always breaks my heart

Standing by the side of my car, the chill of the evening starting to set in as I watched a mother strap her child into the backseat, I shivered, not from the night air, but from the weight of the situation.

Hours earlier, we had been the ‘applicant’ and ‘defendant’ in a courtroom, but now the enormity of the order granted was evident.

Whilst she attempted to smile at her child through the tears, I found myself biting back my own. pThere was no seminar that could possibly have prepared me for these situations.

There’s a clear direction in our ethical standards that we should demonstrate compassion, and provide an empathetic response. But in reality, not one thing I could say would lessen the pain of that moment. I couldn’t even reach out to offer a consoling touch.

I was doing the right thing, as far as my professional duty was concerned. The judge saw it that way, the evidencebase supported it, and I’d also felt the same when I was writing my social work evidence template and putting together an interim care plan.

But away from the courtroom and the words on paper, and instead looking at the grief on a mother’s face, you do start to question whether the argument that you were ‘acting in the child’s best interests’ is really as valid as you claimed. Because ‘doing the right thing’ couldn’t feel closer to doing the wrong thing when recognising the role we have in causing that pain.

Despite all of our differences, she's a mother, and I'm not; she's fighting for her child to be in her care, and I'm advocating to the contrary.

We were united as two people who just wanted to do the right thing. I couldn’t help but wish that we could agree on the same ‘right thing’ to do.

I also wished that the changes made sporadically could have been sustained. There was six months of early help support, a year of child in need plans, 18 months of child protection plans, and three months of pre-proceedings under the public law outline in a final effort to keep the family together.

But none of it worked, despite all of my efforts, and despite all of hers.

She is in no way a bad person, and I have never for a moment doubted that she loves her child, but love alone couldn’t provide the safety and security that was so desperately needed. Love couldn’t prevent her child from witnessing distressing and scarring events, or prevent the people intending to cause her harm from doing so. I could be there to try, Monday to Friday, but when I went home there was nobody there to take over, and nobody to protect her, and her child from continued abuse.

Which is why we found ourselves sitting behind barristers, rather than beside one another, despite the court order, the evidence base, and knowing that we'd worked for years to avoid this happening, it didn't make it any easier.

My colleagues mean well when they tell me to focus on the fact that a child is safe, or that it was the best possible outcome in the long-term. But when I return home, feeling so desperately helpless after the day is complete, this comforts me as inadequately as I was able to comfort her, stood on the side of that road. To know that there is nothing I can do to alleviate the distress of someone I have worked alongside for so long is not easy to overlook.

Social workers are not heartless. Thanks to the connections we cultivate in our profession, we find ourselves - after the decisions are made - party not to proceedings, but to the heartache of those we support. Regardless of how much solace we take in the knowledge that our interventions keep those we work with safe, we are bound to carry out functions that will ultimately cause suffering in order to establish safety; and these two things sit against each other in such a jarring way.

Taking a child away from their parent will always break my heart; no matter how many times I am called upon to do it.

By Millie Glass