A Teachers Dilemma, a Social Workers Reality

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A social worker is a government employee who helps families and children in distress. Families who can not manage themselves due to lack of boundaries, violence or abuse are the main target for a social worker in Child welfare. Sometimes families with good insight would seek this kind of social help when needed, but mostly this welfare are forced help from the public. In serious violation of children’s welfare the government may split up families with force to prevent further abuse. Children may be sent to orphanage or foster care, but the decision never com lightly as the mental issues with separating families are obvious. Since the stigma regarding these problems is so major, the children are at the mercy of others to alert the government. Those others maybe friends and families, but mostly schools and teachers. As everyone have an obligation to alert child welfare when kids are at risk, the school have this as a statutory duty. A social worker will act upon this warnings and issue necessary measures. Lack of social equality may cause different actions in despite of the same distress. The threshold of alerting the government varies with both disabilities and social class background. Teachers are more reluctant to alert child negligent, when the parents are upper class. Fear of confrontation with resourceful parents overwhelms their desire of alerting child neglect. As a result children may continue to live in negligent despite public knowledge. Children with disabilities have in general a larger risk of being abused (predators seek out the weakest). Knowing this, both families and teachers have a very low threshold for alerting Child welfare. The situation may improve if the issue of children’s welfare were put on the agenda, in media as well as in school. A wide debate about social differences and its impact on children’s safety are well over due. Social

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