Vince Peart – Social Work News
This is part of a three part blog post other posts are here:
https://essexcountycouncilexposed.com/vince-peart-social-work-tutor/
https://essexcountycouncilexposed.com/vince-peart-the-truth-about-social-work-book-review/
Vince Peart is currently employed by Sanctuary Personnel as a content editor for Social Work News. He has held this position since September 2022. Previous to this he was employed by Sanctuary Personnel as an Editorial Consultant for Social Work News, he held this position between January 2021 and August 2022.
Per his Linkedin he is currently employed by Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council as a Deputy Manager. He has been in this role since January 2021 and i’m guessing he is deputy manager to a child protection team.
He is also working as an Independent Social Worker and is actively looking for independent and contract work both in the UK and Internationally.
He has been a registered social worker since 2013, in that time he has been employed by 8 different social work providers, 7 of those are local authorities, the other being Cafcass.
There is something really not quite right about that. Each of his roles has started in January and ended in December, most of them lasting a year, a couple, including his current role with Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, lasting two years. The start and finish dates could just be a case of not remembering the exact dates.
8 different social work jobs in 9 years is not a good look for a social work. As a service user i’d be troubled by that. As a potential employer i’d be troubled by that as it looks like he has problems holding down a job. I have no idea why he has had so many jobs, most of them lasting only a year, but it does make me wonder why he has had so many.
I also wonder why when he is full time with Stockton-on-Tees Borough council while working for Sanctuary Personnel as a content editor, he is also actively looking for work as an independent social worker. I would welcome Vince Peart contacting me to clarify his work history.
Sanctuary Personnel relaunched Social Work News is November 2020 as “giving social workers a well deserved voice”. Given that i’ve only seen 4 social workers, including Vince Peart writing for Social Work News, that voice of social work doesn’t seem very large and is limited strictly to the opinions of those four. I’ll do another blog post on Social Work News, for this post i’m concentrating exclusively on Vince Peart.
Vince has changed the name of his Social Work Tutor page to Social Work World as an extension of Social Work News. It’s clearly connected as the logo is identical to Social Work News and the content of his page is exclusively reposts of articles from Social Work News.
I was not thrilled when I realised that by liking Social Work Tutor years ago, I now get Social Work News content in my facebook newsfeed. Vince has utilised his Social Work Tutor page on Facebook to promote Social Work News to unsuspecting people. I am guessing that Sanctuary Personnel are please that he has done this as their Social Work News articles will reach the 501,000 people who like myself, liked his Social Work Tutor page.
I abhor this practice, where people who liked an independent page suddenly find themselves getting material from a huge company in their newsfeed because the owner of the page has decided to use those who liked the original page for material gain.
Nothing has changed since his Social Work Tutor days, Vince Peart is still writing toxic material that harms the social work profession, and damages public trust in the profession.
Social Work Radio is another thing that Vince Peart works on, it’s new, only three podcasts so far. The latest one is incredibly problematic. The title is “Can we stop parents from killing their own children?”. I listened to part of it, but I was getting angry so kind of skipped a lot.
Thats a bit of a tough one, all parents that are known to social work just spend all their time trying to kill their children, every single parent does that. That is the impression I got from both the title and the content I listened to.
The whole point of child protection is to protect children from harm. We’ve all shed enough tears over children being killed that we know it happens. What we haven’t shed any tears about is all the children who social workers have prevented being killed by parents which will be a lot more than those that are killed. We don’t hear about those for obvious reasons. So the obvious answer is yes, of course you can stop parents from killing their own children because it happens all the time.
The title of that podcast is sensationalist and harmful to both social work and service users. I have read a lot of stories from mostly mothers involved in child protection. Every single mother has one thing in common, no matter what has happened, even if their child has been removed from their care as it is in the childs best interests to do so, all of them would give up their own lives to save the life of their child. All of them.
Yet here we are all under suspicion by Vince Peart wondering if we can be stopped from killing our children.
Parents who kill children is a regular topic for Vince, he complains continuously that people always blame the social workers and that isn’t fair. Of course when a child is murdered under horrific circumstances and the child was known to social work and so many oppurtunities to save that child was missed, there will be criticism of why he wasn’t saved.
For the most part though when it comes to the public, the anger is directed at those who murdered the child and the things i’ve seen written about parents and carers who murdered children, i’m just not going to repeat. It all boils down to the same, that normal people cannot comprehend the level of cruelty and abuse done to the child and they explode on the internet. People get angry when a child is murdered.
I don’t know why he thinks that social workers get blamed for the deaths above the parents, because that is not true. People really go for the parents in a big way as it’s absolutely horrific when a child is murdered.
If it’s clear that there were many chances to prevent the child being murdered, then of course people will be criticising the professionals involved. If i’m reading details of a murdered child and that it is quite clear that the information existed at the time that the child was at risk of being severely hurt and could have been saved, I will also criticise the professionals involved.
Now that Vince Peart is working for Sanctuary Personnel he writes things that support them. Here is an email that Vince Peart sent to a fellow Social Worker in 2018. At the time Vince Peart was anonymous as Social Work Tutor. The email is regarding The Social Work Awards which Sanctuary Personnel are partnered with. The Social Worker contacted him regarding the Social Work Awards and how they aren’t great and this is what Vince replied:
The Social Work Awards AND Essex County Council in one email? It’s not even my birthday.
That email states exactly what i’ve been saying in my blog posts regarding the Social Work Awards, it states what others who are against the Social Work Awards have been saying. It states the truth, Vince Peart states that he did research himself so he knows this.
Now he’s working for and being paid by Sanctuary Personnel, his stance seems to have changed regarding the aforementioned awards, including that Essex is massively over-represented.
This is a screenshot from the Social Work News Twitter page:
Where it says Essex County Council it’s because he’s tagged them in it because one of them has been interviewed by him. So much for what he said four years ago. Of course to record the podcast he had to be there, and he was. Ticket paid for by Sanctuary Personnel, and a three course meal and everything else. Opinions can be bought.
One awards ceremony that puts a handful of social workers above all others is one thing, but there is more, how about a whole new awards ceremony run by Vince, his colleague Tilly, in conjunction with Social Work News which is of course owned by Sanctuary Personnel. Now THAT’S a turnaround.
The website is just domain parked at GoDaddy.
Here is the write up at Social Work News:
https://www.mysocialworknews.com/article/introducing-the-pride-of-social-work-awards
But now, a new annual celebration is set to unite social workers all over the world, elevating the public profile of the profession, and celebrating its success stories like never before.
“We chose the name, The Pride of Social Work Awards, because we felt nobody was shouting our success stories from the rooftops and, more importantly, the success stories of the people we support,” says Vince Peart, one of two UK social workers behind the new international evening of celebration, which will launch in 2022.
So in three years he went from objection to the Social Work Awards, to planning his own awards under a slightly different name with an even stronger link to Sanctuary Personnel.
It looks like it was a bit of a fail as 2022 is almost gone and nothing has been done with the idea. I’m very relieved about that.
Talking of celebrating Social Workers, Vince Peart doesn’t need celebrating, he’s all about celebrating himself. Why does he think social workers need celebrating so much? He also frequently writes about how there is not enough positivity in the media about social workers.
What are they going to do? I wrote a compliment about a social worker, there is absolutely no way that, or anything about that compliment could ever find it’s way into the media without every single confidentiality law in existence being broken.
I also wrote to our local hospital with regards to how one of my children was treated, when they responded they asked if they could publicise what we’d said with all identifying information removed, which is doable because it could have been referring to thousands of others of patients, nobody could ever trace those comments back to us. It also wouldn’t have been bad if they could.
With a caring profession the reward is in helping someone, not in the whole world telling you that you are brilliant.
I have rarely seen service users having a place in the writings of Vince Peart, he tends to focus on putting forth the view that social workers are all heroes and service users are rubbish.
There is a lot of talk about banning agency workers. This has already happened in Northern Ireland where from June 2023 agency social workers will be banned.
The Association of Directors of Children’s Services held a conference and suggested regulating or banning social work agencies.
I’ve seen this mentioned by lots of people who usually talk about how much better this would be for children, it is incredibly harmful to children to have a multitude of social workers in and out of their lives. They need to have consistency and that means long term social workers employed by the local authority and not agency social workers who may stay there a month and then be gone.
It’s common sense, agency social workers are bad for children, or any service user of social care for that matter.
Vince Peart is really against the banning of agency workers, vehemently opposed to it. What is best for children doesn’t come into his thinking, it’s not mentioned at all. The truth is that agency social workers also cost more, thus leaving local authorities with less money to spend on improving services, as well as the fact that children need the same social worker.
Here is his article regarding that:
He is so much against banning or at least regulating agencies that one could almost suspect he is writing on behalf of the biggest supplier of agency social workers in England, oh wait, he is.
There is not one thought in his head that has wondered what the effects on children of having agency worker after agency worker while they are under children’s services, it’s all about what is best for his employer. A thoughtful article looking at both sides would have been okay, but his article is strictly about trying to drum up support for agency work to continue, which would suit his employer.
However, an article he wrote for Community Care in 2016 is a lot more balanced, though only focusing on the financial side of things and not mentioning what might be best for children:
From everything written by him, including his book, it is my opinion that he has some kind of God complex, that he sees himself as a hero, and parents as potential murderers. He hates it when social workers are blamed for anything, especially in the context of child deaths. He wants the world to view social workers as heroes, he wants them to have a good image, as in turn that would give him a good image.
He has written a lot about the death of Peter Connelly and how people blamed the social workers involved. He actually interviewed Sharon Shoesmith in his book, which was a bit weird in my view as she isn’t, and neither has she ever been, a social worker and there was also absolutely nothing new in the interview, it was just writing what Sharon Shoesmith has already said many times before.
Today I saw his latest article and I was furious, here is the article:
It’s regarding the death of Asiah Kudi who at 20 months old was left alone by her mother in their flat for 6 days. Asiah sadly died. Her mother has been jailed for 9 years for her manslaughter.
It’s manslaughter as opposed to murder as her mother did not purposefully kill her, although it was as a result of her neglect of Asiah. Even a very young child knows you do not leave a toddler alone at all, so there is no excuse.
Vince has gone hard on her, really hard, calls the mum evil, all kinds of things. I’ve got no problem with people blowing off steam with regards to someone who caused a child to die in such a horrific way, but he puts himself forward as a journalist so I would have expected a bit more of an indepth article, maybe exploring the mum’s life, that kind of thing.
It is in stark contrast to an article he wrote regarding Tracy Connelly, the ‘mother’ of Baby Peter Connelly coming up for parole. Every single thing I read regarding her possible parole by anyone was stating that she should not be released. Except for Vince, he said that we have to believe that people can change. Erm, Tracy Connelly had her chance to change, she had already been released from prison once and broke her release conditions, hence why she was back in prison. Not exactly what i’d call a prime candidate for change. Vince got his wish and she has been released. My guess is she will be back inside soon.
He has also stated somewhere, it may be in his book, that people don’t remember the names of Peter’s murderers, only the names of the social workers involved, and Sharon Shoesmith and people aim their vitrol at them instead of the murderers.
Nope. I’ve never once used the kind of language I have used multiple times regarding his murderers on the social workers involved. I will not repeat what i’ve said in the past, and what I still believe regarding his murderers, it’s not very pleasant what i’ve wished on them.
So there Vince is ecstatic because the findings are that nobody could have predicted Asiah Kudi’s death. Meanwhile, the rest of the British public are wishing that someone could have predicted it and stopped it. That someone had realised Asiah had been left, that someone had knocked on her door, that someone had heard that baby cry, just anything. I am certain that all those connected to Asiah and her mother had predicted it and been able to stop it happening.
It’s absolutely disgraceful that Vince is using the findings into her death in this way. My thoughts just lead to a flight of fancy which involve a time machine and a 999 call a few hours after her mother left the flat. It’s not about point scoring. When social workers or any professionals are blamed for not preventing a death, it’s almost always because the death shouldn’t have happened, that signs were there, sometimes signs so obvious that you are left open mouthed.
Nobody is keeping a tally, it’s not a competition. When a child is murdered by a parent or carer it’s just horrific. As a member of the public I feel deeply offended that a social worker would write an article that seems like gloating just because the findings were that nobody could have predicted that the child would be killed by her mother.
The death of Asiah Kudi is also a complex situation, one where I don’t feel that labelling the mother as evil is productive. Verphy Kudi was exposed to domestic violence at a young age and was the victim of child sexual exploitation, including when she fell pregnant, she was a child raising a child.
It is incredible odd that Vince describes Verphy Kudi as evil when she was the victim of sexual exploitation as a child that led to her pregnancy, yet he believes that Shamima Begum who it is thought was also the victim of child sexual exploitation deserves pity and should be allowed back to the UK. While some of the accusations against Shamima have not been proven as there has been no trial, she is accused of things like sewing children into suicide vests.
His opinion on things is never consistent and it changes regarding what is in his best interests to put forward.
Here is his article regarding Shamima Begum
Even if we concentrate solely on her crime of supporting ISIS, Vince gives her a pass because she was a child when she went out there, yet Verphy Kudi is evil for her actions despite her history. He is a hypocrite
I could write for much longer regarding the many articles that Vince Peart has written.
Vince Peart is a fame seeker, he has been since the whole Alston Moor Regeneration Society thing. He then set up Social Work Tutor and put himself forward as an expert. I was under the impression that he was someone with many years of experience, yet he’d been a social worker for less that two years when he set himself up as Social Work Tutor. Complete with a ltd company, and selling merchandise.
He makes social work look bad, in a lot of his articles he is whining incessently about being a social worker. I got to the point ages ago that I asked myself “Why is he still a social worker if he hates the job so much?”. He really does come across as someone who hates the job, he also comes across as someone who wants to be thought of as a hero, and isn’t really about the children. From the memes he posted as Social Work Tutor, and the memes he posts on Social Work World watermarked with Social Work News logo, like this:
That was on Social Work World, so Vince mocks service users who talk a lot. There will always be reasons behind that, whether they need more information or they are just lonely, whatever the reason, the service users he’s talking about do not deserve to be mocked. Even worse, he’s in effect invited all 500k of his followers to mock service users who do that, at the time of writing there are over 450 comments.
He also doesn’t take criticism well, and wrote a whole article on how social workers should support each other and not drag each other down, here is the article:
The part that caught my attention is this:
As a relatively well-known public figure in the social work world, I have had my fair share of bizarre, obsessive, abusive, and weird comments in the past. I gave up caring about these many years ago when I learned that almost all such comments were made by people who were facing significant battles of their own, going from feeling angry and upset at these folk to compassionately wishing them well in the search for peace. I know that people first being thrust into that position of notoriety are not as hardened to such abuse though and, just as I experienced, it can be a very rocky road the first time around.
I am a long time user of parenting forums and I recognise that kind of writing. It’s used by people who have been challenged on something, and are in the wrong but refuse to consider they may be wrong about something so they demean those who challenged them. In this case Vince has decided to say that almost everyone who has challenged him in the past are only doing it because they were facing significant battles of their own, and compassionately wishes them well.
Everything i’ve read from those who have challenged Vince in the past has stated that he doesn’t take constructive criticism very well at all, and cannot handle any criticism of anything he says and will get argumentative rather than enter a rational discussion.
This totally fits in with what i’ve experienced in the past with people who refuse to enter a conversation regarding their views or actions., they can’t handle it and start attacking the person who has raised the issues instead of discussing things calmly.
Vince Peart couldn’t reflect in a room full of mirrors.
Social Workers absolutely should be online, they absolutely should be publishing articles, they absolutely should be stating their opinion on important matters.
It should be done however in a balanced way, and should allow for conversation and constructive criticism. I find that Vince Peart is not a good example of social work, he appears to only care about himself and his self promotion. He has a wikipedia page which I suspect he set up himself, in reality if Wikipedia were informed of it’s content they would delete it as he is not a person in the public eye. It literally is all about one thing he did many years ago that isn’t even noteworthy yet he describes it as ‘finding fame’, he hasn’t even added that he was Social Work Tutor or that he now works as a writer for Sanctuary Personnel.
I find his sudden turnaround regarding the Social Work Awards to be not great, he was investigating them and had found them suspicious 4 years ago, but now he’s working with Sanctuary Personnel who partnered with the Social Work Awards, he thinks they are the best thing in the world. Even planning to set up another awards show.
His opinion has changed to align with the actions of his employer.
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