“Why Can’t I Be There?” — The Social Worker’s Obsession with Private Access to Children

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“Why Can’t I Be There?” — The Social Worker’s Obsession with Private Access to Children

An Analysis of Secrecy, Scripted Interviews, and Patterned Exclusion in Child Protection Culture

Filed Under: Coercive Procedure / Narrative Control / Parent Erasure

Author: Noelle Bonnee Annee Simlett

I. Introduction: A Strange Consistency Across a Decade of Interference

After ten years, dozens of workers, and countless home invasions disguised as “welfare checks,” I noticed something uncanny:

They all wanted the same thing: to get my children alone.

Not to protect them.

Not to support them.

But to extract narrative—without witnesses.

And they were strangely insistent that I not be present.

No camera. No oversight. No mother.

II. The Repetition Is the Revelation

Every single social worker I’ve encountered, no matter their name, background, or tone, has followed this same pattern:

1. They don’t want me in the room.
2. They don’t want it recorded.
3. They don’t want the child to feel protected by their own parent.

Instead, they want a closed-door, high-pressure, highly edited interaction that can be transcribed into a report I’ll never see until it’s too late.

That’s not welfare. That’s extraction theatre.

III. Why They Want Children Alone: Not Safety—Control

A. To Script the Interview

With no witness, they can:

1. Ask loaded questions
2. Interpret silence as concern
3. Reframe confusion as disclosure
4. Attribute words to the child that were never spoken

B. To Eliminate Protective Dynamics

Your presence reminds the child that they are safe, seen, and sovereign.

That’s inconvenient for a system that requires them to appear vulnerable or ambivalent.

C. To Prevent Contradiction

If I’m present, I can:

1. Clarify what my child means
2. Correct false assumptions
3. Hold them accountable in real time

That makes it harder for them to manufacture risk.

IV. Why They Refuse Cameras

“It’s a safeguarding concern.”

“It might make the child uncomfortable.”

“It’s against policy.”

None of these reasons hold.

If they were truly confident in the integrity of their interaction, they would welcome documentation.

Their fear of the camera tells the truth:

They are not protecting the child. They are protecting the narrative.

V. What This Pattern Really Reveals

This is not about my specific case.

It is not about difficult parents.

It is about the culture of secrecy embedded in child protection itself.

1. Private interviews = unchallengeable “evidence”
2. No recordings = no contradictions
3. Parental exclusion = total narrative control

This is how they manufacture removal.

Not through facts. Through isolation and interpretation.

VI. Conclusion: What Are They Afraid You’ll Hear?

If the child is happy, loved, and safe—what are they afraid will be said in front of me?

If their concern is genuine, why must it happen in secret?

I know why.

Because I’ve watched it happen again and again for ten years:

They don’t want to talk to the child.

They want to write about them.

And they can only do that cleanly if the parent is absent, the camera is off, and the truth is alone.

This is not protection.

This is narrative farming behind closed doors.

And I am not letting it pass unnoticed anymore.