Maddy's Story

I was in a meeting helping out a colleague. I was just there to take notes. It was a straightforward task, but I left that meeting feeling completely drained.

"The caseworker was meeting with a Mum who'd been having monthly visits with her daughter. Visits that were going really well. They'd go to parks together and both looked forward to that time. They had a genuinely lovely relationship. But at the last visit, something in the lake scared the daughter. She started crying, and the Mum, overwhelmed by her daughter's distress, matched it. The family visit worker had to step in and help them both calm down.

This meeting was about that visit. I thought the caseworker would spend time reflecting with the Mum and helping her learn some skills to respond differently next time. Instead, the caseworker cut the visits back to every second month.

This didn’t feel right. She didn't need fewer visits with her daughter; she needed help learning how to stay calm when her daughter was upset. The solution was right there, and it wasn't punishment or “protecting” the daughter with less time with her Mum.

What struck me most was watching the Mum's face as she tried to hide her devastation. She agreed with the caseworker that cutting visits was the right call. But I don't think she agreed at all. I think she was too scared to push back. She knew that if she advocated for herself, she'd risk being labelled as too emotional, difficult or aggressive. I think she swallowed her feelings and accepted a decision that was fundamentally unfair. She deserved to be angry in that moment. She had every right to be but didn’t feel she could.

There's also another person in this equation I keep thinking about. The daughter. What message does she receive from this? Does she think that because she cried at the park, she's now not allowed to see her Mum as often? Does she blame herself for the visits being cut?

This relationship was genuinely working. It wasn’t perfect, no relationship is, but it was built on love and trust. This relationship was harmed by a system that chose punishment over support. A risk-averse system that didn't know what to do with a Mum who needed help, so it separated her from her daughter instead."

- Maddy’s story, a caseworker of 5 years (name and photo changed to protect privacy)

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