SWANK Statement No. 018: Who Else Will Be Pulled Into This Mess?

SWANK Statement No. 018: Who Else Will Be Pulled Into This Mess?

When social workers can’t justify their own interference, they do what all bureaucrats do best:

They drag everyone else in.

Teachers.

Doctors.

Housing officers.

Therapists.

Strangers.

Exes.

Receptionists.

Pensioners who once glanced in your direction.

No one is safe from being conscripted into the narrative.

This is not child protection.

This is institutional scaffolding—a desperate effort to stabilise a collapsing story by involving as many adjacent systems as possible.

Because if the concern was legitimate, it would stand alone.

Instead, it wobbles. It leaks. It expands in panicked concentric circles.

Who else will be pulled in next?

1. The GP who doesn’t want to say no.
2. The teacher who barely remembers your child.
3. The neighbour who feels something is off but can’t articulate why.
4. The support worker who didn’t support.
5. The consultant who never read the notes.
6. The manager who signs things in bulk.

They’re all at risk—of becoming complicit in a system too prideful to admit it got it wrong.

At SWANK, we’ve learned to watch the pattern:

1. The more people they involve,
2. The more they claim to be neutral,
3. The more it proves they are wrong.

Because truth doesn’t require scaffolding.

Lies do.

And so we document—every referral, every contradiction, every hesitant professional roped into a collapsing intervention.

Because when this mess falls apart (and it will), we’ll know exactly who held the rope—and who let go.