Vince Peart – Social Work Tutor

This is part of a three part series of blog posts, other posts are here:

https://essexcountycouncilexposed.com/vince-peart-social-work-news/

https://essexcountycouncilexposed.com/vince-peart-the-truth-about-social-work-book-review/

I came across Vince Peart recently through researching my blog posts on The Social Work Awards and their ties to Sanctuary Personnel. Vince Peart is currently employed full time by Sanctuary Personnel as a content editor for their website/publication Social Work News.

I saw his name on Twitter on a Twitter account called Social Work World which is clearly connected to Social Work News and thus Sanctuary Personnel. Clicked on his name and it said I was blocked. I’d never even heard of him, so why block me? So I was intrigued and did some reading.

It turned out that although I didn’t know his name, i’d already read plenty from him and had liked a page he ran on Facebook.

Vince Peart is a child protection social worker, having qualified in 2013.

In 2015 he set up a page on Facebook called The Social Work Tutor, it was an anoymous page where the author would write what he thought about a whole range of social work related things. He also posted ‘funny’ memes like this one:

At that point I was in a “All social workers are bad” mindset, and Social Work Tutor confirmed that mindset. So many of his memes were about how rubbish parents are. It enforced the idea in my head that child protection social workers see parents as having a bottle of vodka in one hand, a crack pipe in the other, with our children locked in cages behind us.

Was I upset? Yes, because at that point after dealing with the consequences of when child protection goes wrong, i’m reading his page and i’m seeing examples of why it goes so wrong, parents aren’t in with a chance, social workers think they are bad so will do anything and everything to prove that, even making stuff up, and leaving important information out.

I remember him doing the whole swan song thing, which is when someone threatens to leave in a dramatic fashion. He was all about how he was a victim and big bully meanies were making him sad. In my very vast experience of parenting forums, those swan songs occur when the person has been called out over something they have done wrong, they turn it around and blame everyone who challenges them, making out they are the victim while failing to even acknowledge they may be in the wrong and they will rob you of their presence by leaving. Then people who don’t know what went on convince them to stay.

Saw that happen with his Social Work Tutor page.

What actually happened was that other social workers were calling him out over his memes and posts, expressing concern about the image of social workers they were portraying to service users. Some of his other posts were toxic and he was being called out about those as well.

I do think that Social Workers should have an online presence, they should be able to publicly talk about what they do and their profession, the good, and the bad. They should be allowed to voice their opinions, and they should challenge things and allow themselves to be challenged by others, including service users.

However, a great deal of what Vince Peart wrote as Social Work Tutor, and what he continues to write under his own name is toxic. It paints social work in a very poor light, and social workers come out of it not looking great.

Before Vince Peart qualified as a social worker, and before Social Work Tutor, he actively sought out fame and attention. He has his own wikipedia page which tells how while living in a village he decided that he would advertise for women to move to his village so him and his friends would be able to have girlfriends. He claimed there were 10 men to every woman in the village, although this figure has been disputed by many, including other men who live in the village.

His Wikipedia entry is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Peart

Screenshot of the page as it stands now:

I did look through the wikipedia article edit history and it would appear that he is not well liked in the village, and entries which were later edited out call him out over certain things. Someone added the information that he was Social Work Tutor and it was then taken out by someone else which I believe was him.

Given that a Wikipedia entry is meant to be a biographical web page of the persons life, it seems really strange that nothing past when he was in the newspapers has been put on there by him. There is nothing that says he is a social worker, nothing about his Social Work Tutor page, and nothing about his book. Yes, he wrote a book, i’ve bought the book and i’ve read it. My review of the book will be on another post.

The whole village in crisis thing reeks of misogyny. Why did he feel that the women should move to his village instead of him moving elsewhere? The whole thing boils down to him believing that he is entitled to have a girlfriend and that as there weren’t enough women in his village and he couldn’t get a girlfriend, that women should uproot their whole lives to benefit him as he deserves it.

The figure he gives out that there was 1 woman to every 10 men in his village is untrue, it would appear that what happened is that nobody wanted to date him. The whole thing was just him seeking fame, even that he set up a wikipedia page is cringe, he is not someone who is in the public eye.

Vince Peart started the Social Work Tutor page in 2015, he registered a company called Social Work Tutor Ltd in July 2015. He was selling merchandise through the page, so that might have been the reason for the company being registered.

When I found his page I was under the impression that he was a social worker with a lot of experience and knowledge, it turns out he started the page within 2 years of qualifying as a social worker, That is really not enough on the ground experience for anyone to put forward the image they are experienced and an expert in something like social work.

The whole page was toxic, what he posted, and the memes as well, it came over loud and clear that he doesn’t like service users. Given the huge amount of other social workers posting comments on his page and liking his posts, that was more than enough for me to know that service users are hated by social workers. I’d assumed that all social workers felt the same, there was no social workers challenging him, so it was clear that every single social worker who read his posts and saw his memes agreed with him.

As i’ve recently found out I thought wrong. Plenty of social workers challenged him and they were stating that he was giving off the impression that social workers don’t like service users and that was wrong. Some were also debating about whether his memes constituted a breach of standards that the HCPC, who was the social work regulator at that time, would take action over for bringing the profession into disrepute.

There are two blogs that i’ve found that covered his Social Work Tutor time, and they both covered this aspect. I read it and I cried. I cried because I was wrong, not all social workers see us as Vince peart does with his SWT memes, to the point they were challenging him regarding them and actually stating that they would give service users the exact impression that they had given me, that is a great feeling, to feel that social workers were sticking up for service users.

While I personally don’t feel that the memes and posts were enough to get the regulator involved, I am so grateful that meaningful debates on how damaging they are were happening.

I have also read that Vince Peart does not like to be challenged and hits out and claims bullying and harassment and then plays the victim. Nope, not a good look for a social worker, when challenged he should have listened, taken on board what other social workers were saying, welcomed comments. Vince claimed he was being an advocate for social workers, but that would involved listening to them, those with positive comments and also those who challenged him, in a calm and thoughtful manner. He should have used what other social workers were saying as a learning experience.

I don’t know when he stopped writing as Social Work Tutor, I don’t know when he took down his blog and deleted absolutely everything on his Social Work Tutor facebook page that was written by him as Social Work Tutor.

There is literally nothing left of Social Work Tutor, Vince Peart has deleted it all, all that remains is what is posted by other blogs, and his book that he wrote as Social Work Tutor which is still on sale.

He has literally removed absolutely everything related to Social Work Tutor from everywhere, my guess is that because of the criticism he decided to delete everything instead of responding. I believe the two other blogs challenging him may have helped in his decision. The blogs are as follows:

http://www.pinktape.co.uk/rants/the-truth-about-social-work-tutor-part-ii/

The Woeful State of Our Debate: the Social Work Tutor

I haven’t written extensively regarding his Social Work Tutor page and blog because at the time it didn’t come across as anything different or something that might need challenging. I was upset and sickened by what he was writing and the memes he was posted that made service users out to be worthless, but at that point we’d just experienced exactly that so I just thought that all children’s social workers thought that about service users. To me it wasn’t just one social worker that felt like that about us, it was all of them.

That in itself is very damning of his blog, and I fully agree with what the social workers who challenged his blog and page at the time said, Social Work Tutor did damage the public view of the profession.