Wednesday's Child by Shane Dunphy

should have been here to meet you and make sure you settled in.’
     
    ‘Not at all! You were ill. I got on fine. I was quite impressed with Joe, actually. He got that knife off Mrs Kelly while he was only really semi-conscious. Had to be seen to be believed!’
     
    She laughed again, leaning back against the door frame.
     
    ‘Will you join us in the kitchen for a coffee? There’s a nice bakery just down the road and we get some scones and cakes delivered up on Wednesdays for the team meetings. Call it a hidden incentive. One of the few rules that I have is that everyone make every possible effort to attend the team meetings. I understand if you’re in court or if there’s a case conference you have to attend or an emergency visit you just
have
to make, but that shouldn’t happen more than once or twice in a year. All the other weeks in the year, I want you here on a Wednesday morning.’
     
    ‘Got you.’
     
    ‘Good. Then we’ll get along fine. Now, come and have coffee and an apple sponge and meet some of your new colleagues. You look like an apple-sponge man to me.’
     
    ‘Well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we?’
     
    She laughed again and led me out the door and across to the kitchen.
     
    ‘Yes, we will.’
     
    The meeting itself took place in the room downstairs. A circle of chairs was pulled up and theassembled throng, most still clutching mugs of tea or coffee, gathered round. Minutes of the previous meeting and an agenda for this one had been distributed into our pigeon holes that morning. They were about cases and issues that I had, as yet, no knowledge of. There was also a notice that training in Child Sexual Abuse Assessment was being made available in the coming month, but only to social workers. I felt the old irritation at this kind of slight.
     
    The lines of rank and file among the professions are clearly drawn out in Social Care in Ireland. In other countries, I had learned, they were far looser, but in the class-conscious society that has developed here everyone must know their place and live with it. The order ran as follows: at the top of the pile are the social workers. They run the cases and must make all major decisions as to how a case is operated. In practice there are many cases that have no social worker, and there are indeed social workers with a great deal of respect for their non-social-work colleagues, but the fact remains that rank can be and is pulled on an all too regular basis.
     
    Next in line are the childcare workers. Their role, as I have already stated, is to work in a therapeutic and child-centred way with their clients, representing them at case conferences and presenting their needs and opinions to any agencies they are working with. Childcare workers are much more ‘at the coal-face’ than social workers. Their contact with the children is more constant and more regular.
     
    The final link in the chain are the family support workers. Their job is to work with families in an holistic way, assisting with matters such as financial management, behaviour management with challenging children, hygiene and nutrition.
     
    The reason for this hierarchy stems, probably, from qualifications. In the past, social workers had degrees while childcare workers did not. Family support workers, despite the hugely important work they do, were rarely qualified, and often only worked part-time. While this is no longer the case, the delineation remains.
     
    The meeting rattled on until 12.30 or so, and then everyone broke for lunch. Lunch happened in a pub just down the road from the offices. I stood at the bar, feeling uncomfortable, like a child on his first day at school. I ordered coffee and a club sandwich, and then found Andi at my arm, leading me to a table.
     
    I remember reading an article in
Empire
magazine about the making of the movie
Planet of the Apes
. It observed that during breaks in filming, the actors playing the apes in the movie would automatically