The visit

My friend J. was here as she was first hand witness a few times when I had to deal with my nut-case of a case worker.
The complaints officer arrived on time and introduced himself as Liam and he told us that he was an 'independent' complaints officer. Even though he was working for the same institution...Ya, right.
When the usual formalities were out of the way, he asked me to put into my own words what the exact complaints were.
I thought this was funny, as the complaints letter showed what the complaints were, in my own words...
Nevertheless, I printed out the complaints letter again so we both had one in front of us and I started from the first complaint.

There were a few points that I mentioned where Liam somehow tried to justify the case worker's behaviour or where he tried to explain it as: "Maybe she misunderstood." Or: "Maybe there was some miscommunication."
Before this complaint was being handled, I was already afraid that this would happen: Them trying to cover their colleagues' butt... But that's all fine. There are just too many 'misunderstandings' and 'miscommunications' for this to stick. In the case of our social worker, the misunderstandings had been going through the roof and at this point we're not talking anymore about a human being simply making a mistake by 'misunderstanding' one thing, but about someone who systematically misunderstands nearly everything she hears and uses this against another person.
In the case of a social worker this is called misconduct. Not very professional of a social worker to misunderstand everything and turn it into something else when their most important feature should be listening skills.

The complaints

I mentioned what she had said to my daughter, how she might have bipolar disorder. You can't exactly call that misunderstanding anything. It's misconduct. Nothing more and nothing less.
How she also told her that she understood that she was depressed (another thing she should have never said) because 'her mother was not exactly stable at the moment'. He raised his eye brows at that one. And I mentioned how she told my daughter she would see if she could get her a phone without consulting me or following up on that.
He asked me why I thought this was an issue. Are we for real here? I really have to explain this?
Well for starters, she didn't know what kind of agreement my daughter and I had. For all she knows, I could have banned phones from the house. Or maybe I didn't want her to have a phone 'for free' and did I want her to earn it. Or maybe (which is the case) did she have (4!) phones before but lost them or broke them all within less than 2 months and did I think she should live without one for a while. Besides this, they were making a big fuss when a friend of mine gave her 100 euro (50 for Christmas and 50 for her birthday) because they thought it was 'inappropriate' but now all of a sudden it's perfectly fine for a social worker to offer an expensive gift just like that? Am I the unreasonable one here or am I missing something? It is MY child and last time I checked it was up to the parent(s) what was allowed and what not. He made a few notes and went on with his 'investigation'.

J. and I went on to tell him about the meeting we had in which she spoke to me like I was a little child, was very patronizing and rude and in which she told J. not to speak Dutch but English when she only told me something to shut me up because we weren't getting anywhere. He asked if J. was supposed to talk or just there for support. We told him that indeed she was there for support, but she spoke to me and no one else and wasn't interfering but trying to calm me down. He noted this too.

We also mentioned some of the threats she made, like when she casually mentioned foster care twice. He asked if she literally said she would take my kids into care if I didn't do what she wanted. Of course not. But mentioning foster care is more than enough for a parent to jump into high alert. I will elaborate on this at a later stage, because we weren't done yet.

Liam looked at his watch and we saw the meeting had gone on for more than 2 hours. And we weren't even half-way!
He told me he would type out what he had written down for my review. He is going to come back again later this week to go through more of the complaints.
He explained that he will get everything typed out then for review before it is sent on to the case worker so she can reply. When he told me that it could become a case of ''he said/she said" I told him that I wasn't worried about that since there are witnesses as well as written evidence that she has been bending the truth or plain lied about certain things.

He concluded by reminding me that if I don't like the outcome, I can take it to the Ombudsman. Oh, not to worry: I will.

But first, let's see how she is going to try to get out of ALL of these complaints...

To be continued...

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