The Intelligence Crisis in Social Work: A Public Confession

The Intelligence Crisis in Social Work: A Public Confession

Or: Why It’s Hard to Believe This Is Even Real

We’ve all had that moment:

Reading a social worker’s report and thinking, Surely this is a parody. Surely no adult wrote this without irony.

And yet… they did.

The absurd grammar.

The logical collapse.

The pathological misunderstandings repackaged as insight.

At first, we assumed this was individual error. A training gap. A bad apple.

But eventually — tragically — we realised:

This is the system.

This is the standard.

And that’s when the real disorientation begins.

Because it’s hard to believe that social work has no authentic purpose.

Our minds resist it. They look for nuance, benefit of the doubt, a misplaced good intention.

We try to decode the stupidity as if it were a cipher.

We keep asking, Why would someone write this if they meant well?

But that’s the trap. The answer is: they didn’t.

Social Work Is Not Designed for Intelligence

It is designed for:

1. Obedience
2. Misinterpretation
3. Surveillance
4. Escalation without liability

It doesn’t require understanding. It requires compliance.

Intelligence would be a liability — it would raise questions, demand nuance, and resist narrative conformity.

Which is why social workers are so often… not particularly bright.

Not because they failed upward.

But because they are doing exactly what the system rewards.

The Public Struggle to Believe It

The rest of us — scholars, mothers, researchers, survivors — are left blinking into the procedural void.

Trying to rationalise a structure that does not require rationality.

Trying to find sense where there is only process.

We are not confused.

We are appalled.

Because the implications are clear:

If this level of incompetence is empowered to judge parenting, then parenting itself has become a threat to authority.

The SWANK Position

We no longer decode.

We no longer explain.

We document.

We dissect.

We make it plain.

Social work isn’t misunderstood.

It’s functioning exactly as intended — and that’s the problem.

SWANK: Standards & Whinges Against Negligent Kingdoms

For those who got the report and knew immediately… this was not about the child.

#IntellectualRefusal #SWANKWitnesses #SocialWorkSatire #ProceduralGaslighting #TheDullShallInheritTheCaseFiles