Wednesday's Child by Shane Dunphy Page A

congregate in the canteen with actors who were wearing make-up of a similar breed of ape. So a visitor to the set would see a table full of gorillas, a table full of orang-utans, a table full of chimpanzees. No one forced this, it wasn’t a ‘method technique’, it just naturally occurred.
     
    In the pub this lunchtime, I found myself participatingin something very similar. At the table Andi led me to were the two family support workers, Marjorie and Betty. Andi pushed me into a chair and sat down beside me. And there we sat: childcare workers and family support workers, the two lowest primate groupings on the Child Protection Team.
     
    ‘So you’re the new boy in class.’ Marjorie smiled at me.
     
    Marjorie was dressed in a long, tie-dyed skirt and beaded top with Doc Marten boots. Betty was very smartly dressed in a suede suit, a cigarette already smouldering in her hand and her eyes languidly half-closed.
     
    ‘What in the name of God brings you to this godforsaken part of the universe?’ she asked, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth.
     
    ‘I’m a sucker for punishment,’ I said, shaking my head at the proffered box of cigarettes.
     
    ‘You must be.’
     
    ‘You’re not from around here,’ Marjorie said, putting sugar into her coffee and helping me to move plates and ashtrays as our food arrived.
     
    ‘No. I’m from Wexford. I have family here, though. That’s how I know the area.’
     
    ‘So you’re not quite a blow-in.’
     
    ‘Well, I’ve only really been here on visits before, so I’m hardly a local.’
     
    ‘Well, you’re very welcome anyway.’ Betty grinned.
     
    ‘Thanks. Any hints on survival?’
     
    ‘With the cases you’ve been given?’
     
    Marjorie and Betty shared a wry glance.
     
    ‘Well, I reckon you’ve got two choices really,’ Marjorie said, solemnly patting the back of my hand.
     
    ‘And they are?’
     
    ‘You can drown or you can thrash your arms about and scream for help.’
     
    I raised an eyebrow.
     
    ‘I don’t follow.’
     
    ‘I’ve seen people who were loaded with the real problem cases, who worked themselves ragged, never complained, never caused a fuss and who ended up actually quite poorly as a result of the stress. D’you see Melanie over there?’
     
    She gesticulated with her head towards the person in question, who was sitting at a table on the other side of the pub with a group of cronies.
     
    ‘Could I possibly miss her?’
     
    ‘They tried to do it to her: gave her the worst cases, ran her ragged. And do you know what happened?’
     
    I glanced in the direction of the subject of our discussion. Melanie’s voice could be heard above the rest of the chatter in the pub, and her booming laugh punctuated our conversation like a depth charge.
     
    ‘You know,’ I said, ‘she doesn’t look like she’s under too much strain.’
     
    ‘That’s because she just refused to continue with it. She threw a terrible strop, brought her case right to the childcare manager.’
     
    In the Community Care Department within the Health Boards in Ireland, teams were led by teamleaders, who are always social workers. All the teams are co-ordinated by the senior social worker. The senior social worker (as well as the heads of Disability Services, Residential Services and a range of other teams and providers) is answerable to the childcare manager, who was usually a social worker but was sometimes a therapist or psychologist, as our childcare manager was.
     
    ‘Her caseload was cut right back. She wasn’t popular for it, but they never took her for granted again.’
     
    ‘That’s good to know.’
     
    ‘Now take her side-kick there. Sinéad.’
     
    Sinéad was the social worker Andi had mentioned to me in relation to Gillian O’Gorman. Petite and gregarious, she was sitting with Melanie, and was almost as loud.
     
    ‘Sinéad is a different story,’ Betty chimed in. ‘She arrived here practically straight from college.