The following comment has been placed on a rather old CYFS Watch post on this blog:

The majority of CYFS social workers work long, hard hours with uncooperative clients and family members, to blame the problems of low-socio-economics on the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is outrageous. Look in your own backyard before you right off those who are willing to attempt to change our violent, drug-addicted culture. Those who post private information on social workers have many other paths for redress and to subject these people to public vilification in such a biased manner is wrong.

Let’s dissect.

The majority of CYFS social workers work long, hard hours with uncooperative clients and family members

I’ve never disagreed with that, and nothing said here or anywhere on this blog should be taken as contradicting that. The problem is that they are working long hours ruining perfectly good families in some cases.

 to blame the problems of low-socio-economics on the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is outrageous

I don’t think that “blaming the problems…” is the point of the CYFS watch site. The point of the site, is, broadly speaking, that some CYFS workers are out of control, and destroy perfectly good families.

Look in your own backyard before you right off those who are willing to attempt to change our violent, drug-addicted culture.

Nice, but you appear to be making an assumption here that may or may not be true.

I also find it questionable as to whether or not CYFS is about “changing our culture”. And again, the CYFS watch site wasn’t setup because CYFS is changing it, it’s because they are not, and are bothering normal people instead.

Those who post private information on social workers have many other paths for redress and to subject these people to public vilification in such a biased manner is wrong.

I suspect the definitions of “private information” that you, I or CYFS watch hold may be very, very different.  Generally, I would agree that addresses and other identifying information should not be published. However, I do consider that names of workers who abuse their responsibilities should, preferably after a full hearing of all the facts.

The problem here is that there is no authority to balance the quite considerable powers CYFS workers hold. You clearly do not agree, but I have yet to hear of any cases where CYFS workers have been found guilty of misspratice by say, the Children’s Commissioner.

CYFS could have avoided this situation by having an independent review authority setup a long time ago. Many groups have called for this, and all have previously been ignored.

Sure, the CYFS watch site is an extreme response, and it’s crossed the line in my opinion (as you would know if you read my latest post). However, I don’t accept that we should assume that all CYFS workers are honest, hardworking people on trust, with no authority to check their wide-ranging powers.