i have a dream

I had a slightly surreal conversation with someone at my work yesterday. I had read an article that morning about the horrific abuse and death of a little 17 month old child at the hands of his own mother and stepfather. He had been monitored by social services for the last year of his life and had been in hospital countless times with injures to horrific to even describe here, yet the abuse had been allowed to continue and the parents had kept custody of the boy. As I was reading this in the metro, on the tube to work, I was nearly in tears. It is just so incredibly sad that someone would do that do a child, but also so unbelievable that no one social services had acted on the blatant abuse. When I got to work I re-told the story to my work collegues and exclaimed how if our company goes bust (which it just might!) I am thinking of re-training as a social worker. This conversation followed

-but this is just the kind of thing that should make you NOT want to be a social worker!
-eh?
-well their job must be so hard and they probably had their hands tied, blah blah blah

So because a job is hard, because you may need to work to change things and your work may not be appreciated by everyone, you should simply not do it? So we should have no social workers? No one should be willing to take on that job and try and help children and people in general and make a difference in our society?

I am under no illusion that the job would be easy, but I think it is important. Far more important than selling bikinis.

Rant over, I will be late for work!