Social Welfare Blog justified
I think Social Welfare workers do a bloody hard job looking after the broken children our society seems to produce in such numbers. But with any department that has as much power as CYFs does, there has to be some type of system set up to appeal decisions and ultimately have complaints heard in front of an independent board, the fact that CYFs doesn’t even have such mechanisms in place explains the fury and anger some helplessly feel in the face of a such a bureaucratic monolith to set up their own name and shame blogsite. Indeed the attitude of the Gordon McFadyen goes some way to explain the lax attitude many accuse the department of having when he says, his office did not have the resources to investigate every complaint and exercised "discretion" about which ones to look into. "We tend to make a decision to look into matters where we have some common themes coming through - systemic things, rather than individual complaints," he said.
Social workers bid to close name-and-shame blogsite
The site, which gives the email address of another social worker and describes the personal appearance of several others in derogatory terms, has attracted a storm of protest from the Social Workers' Association, the Social Workers Registration Board and the Public Service Association. Ministry of Social Development chief executive Peter Hughes has instructed lawyers to "do whatever is necessary to get rid of this website".
4 Comments:
I'm sorry bomber but while accountability is good you simply cannot publish addresses of people like that. It is illegal and it opens the door for all manner of psychos to come running to get their physical revenge. I give the site only a few days now because of the simple fact its run by Google who have offices here. When you have an office here you are bound by our laws. The lawyers involved can just subpoena Google for the IP addresses of the webmaster, then go after them like that. The person responsible will be held to account for this and will have their day in court.
Peter, get a grip, take some deep breath's. Read Tim's Prison Blog's - respond to them - not other random stuff! Go make movie. Change name to Peter Jackman. Have a nice day!
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Thomas - you are of course right - we shouldn't have a site like this operating - BUT, if the complaints department of CYFS (a department with the power to take your kids away) don't even investigate every complaint, and in fact only choose to investigate complaints against them, based on their unchallenged discretion - dude, you can fully understand why people are taking issues into their own hands. Google won't shut this site down, that Acknowledges responsibility, acknowledging responsibility opens them up legal action. This site is going no where unless CYFS change the way they investigate complaints against their department. I don’t agree with the name and shame blog but understand the reasons why it is there, deal with the reasons and there won’t be a demand for this.
Addresses no, names no, locations where situations took place and the story lines - yes.
I believe everyone is entitled to privacy, and it's up to CYFS to police their staff internally. If they fail in that it's up to Social Welfare Ministries to follow up and roll the heads of the managers all the way up the line.
The person(s) making the complaints should make themselves available to be interviewed and make testimonial's for their case of complaint against CYFS.
Accountability is the bottom line, and if these organisations refuse accontability they need to be held civilly liable for their actions.
Opening the door for the vengeance and violence crowd though is not the answer. Posting people names and addresses isn't either.
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