Why I’m proud of my work helping a sex offender access benefits
One of my proudest achievements as a social worker is the time I helped a sex offender become financially secure. Rob* rang me after our work together had ended to tell me no one would employ him because of his convictions.
He’d applied for benefits but the assessor was querying exactly how his complex mental health condition impacted on his day-to-day life and it was looking likely they’d turn him down. I wrote a detailed letter that was instrumental in getting him the maximum allowance.
It’s easy to see why someone might be angry reading that. If you connect two elements of the story – the harm he caused and the money he’s getting – it goes against any sense of natural justice. When you add in that the money Rob got was taxpayer’s money and could’ve gone to help any number of other vulnerable people, it seems like hard evidence society has lost its moral perspective.
So why am I proud of it? The answer is multi-layered. On a personal level, I take pride in the strength it took me, an abuse survivor, to work compassionately with a perpetrator. It was also the right thing to do for Rob; he was and is a human being, not just a set of offences.
But beyond that, giving him financial security was essential in preventing him re-offending. Rob had been part of a therapeutic programme for sex offenders I helped facilitate. The programme encouraged reflection about relationships and communication to help the attendees live better lives, rather than focusing on the offending behaviour itself.
It was a rare opportunity for sex offenders to receive therapy outside the criminal justice system. Rare because when it comes to sex offenders, society seems more focused on retribution than preventing abuse.
When the programme ended, Rob was back in society with a new psychological perspective, but he still faced the challenge of rebuilding his life.
Many organisations who work to prevent reoffending recognise that without a meaningful life many offenders will lapse back into old behaviour. They often use the Good Lives Model which identifies 11 aspects of a ‘good life’.
Each aspect is harder to work on if you’re living in poverty, but the area that most applied to Rob was agency. Giving him financial security gave him agency, it reduced the feelings of powerlessness and rage that had contributed so catastrophically to his offending.
To date, Rob hasn’t reoffended. I believe the letter I wrote, and its outcome, contributed just as much as the weeks of therapy.
I’m a forensic social worker and successes like Rob’s have kept me in this relatively niche area of the profession for over a decade.
The extreme nature of the challenge is what provides opportunity for radical change. Anti-oppressive practice is a core value of our profession. Applying that value successfully in the state’s most oppressive system – criminal justice – is a powerful act with equally powerful results.
When social workers combat stigma based on characteristics like race or sexuality we face huge obstacles, but we carry with us a moral certainty that gives us strength. The clients of forensic social workers don’t give us that foundation; we understand exactly why domestic violence perpetrators and sex offenders face stigma.
But if we’re able to recognise the incalculable harm they’ve caused and look beyond it, we can profoundly change the course of that person’s life and in doing so make society a safer place.
There is an epidemic of abuse in the UK. If you’re a social worker you already know this because you see it every day. The majority of our work is dealing with the myriad ways trauma manifests: poverty, physical and mental illness, family breakdowns and crime.
Forensic social work is dealing with the consequences of trauma (many perpetrators have experienced abuse) and also the causes of it. It is battling an epidemic by vaccinating the super spreaders, cutting off the virus at source. And I’m not ashamed to take pride in that.
*Name changed to protect identity
Dan Lewis has worked in forensic mental health since qualifying as a social worker 11 years ago. He has worked in the field of mental health for 20 years