Social Work and Policy: Mothers of Drug Addicts and Childcare

Running head: SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY
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Social Work and Policy
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SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY 2
Social Work and Policy
This literature is going to focus on the piece by Povey, Povey (2018) which talks about
what happens to mothers who are drug addicts when their children are repeatedly taken to care. It
is an investigation by a paranoma program of the BBC, which looks at the struggle the women
are going through to get their babies back. According to this article, the only right thing to do is
to help the mothers. Helping them according to the author will also reduce the number of
children going to care. Further, the author asserts that the system abandons the mothers of the
children, once the children are taken into care. Further, according to the article, the number of
children going into care has been steadily rising since the 1990's. The children's court reported
up to 64% increase in the number of care applications made since the 1990's. The sharp rise is
attributed to major factors, mainly the death ‘of baby p' Peter Connelly after abuse for several
months. This was despite several visits by the authorities. The death of baby P placed a spotlight
on child protection decisions and the professionals involved in making the decisions. After this
case, local authorities used different strategies to respond to similar cases, however, care
application cases were still rising in subsequent years (Swain & Rice, 2014).
Under the Australian Department of Social Services, the post by the Government called
‘Care Leavers' and ‘Protecting Australia's Children' makes an inquiry on why children are always
neglected and abused and makes recommendations on what should be done, Just like the article
by Povey. The post by government asserts that almost everyone in Australia is related, knows
someone who experienced out-of-home care or works with them (Hoghughi,2014). The
government article categorizes the children as forgotten citizens. The article further describes
why the children were placed in the child-care homes. The reasons are similar to the news article
and include being orphaned, neglected by the parents, abuse, divorce, domestic violence,

SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY 3
poverty, and born of a single mother and hardship due to inability to cope with the child. This
similar to our main news article because the same reasons together with mental illness are
contributing factors towards child neglect and child abuse (Tsanfteski, 2014).
Both articles show that most children are removed from parental care due to neglect. This
neglect is caused by the underlying needs of parents which include mental illness, abusive
relationships and drug and substance abuse (Arney, 2013). Sometimes assessments can be
carried out on a woman before birth when a social worker has concerns regarding the pregnant
woman. If evidence suggests that the unborn child is at risk of significant harm, an application is
made so that the child is removed from the care of the mother, right after birth. Different
timescales and tools are used in the assessments of the risk and in determining whether the child
should be removed from the others care.(Faeda, 2015).
Both articles also advocate for proper handling of childcare.When children are removed from the
care of their mothers, it is always a traumatic experience according to Povey (2018). When
women had multiple pregnancies, then the child is removed they usually feel the intense
intervention by the social work. After some time they also feel abandoned. Povey suggests that
there is need to change the way social work and how child protection is carried out. The focus
should be supporting the children to remain in their families other than making parent displaying
unacceptable behavior go though risk assessments and interventions. Too much pressure is
placed on social workers, coupled with making things wrong. This makes them have less time to
devote to the case. Most of the decisions made are based on fear of getting things wrong and
reducing the risk of bad decision making. Such lack of focus on the parenting is not a new
phenomenon. This is a total contrast to the initiative of the government on troubled families
which aims at supporting parents in homes with multiple problems. On the other hand, the