People think the job is kicking doors in. I have never kicked a door. I have knocked on a great many and stood there long enough to read the whole of a takeaway menu.
This is a Tuesday. It is made up, like everything else I write, and it is as ordinary as I can make it.
8:40
Log in. The system would like to update. The system has chosen now.
8:55
Forty-one emails. Six are about the car park. One is from a school, sent at 4:58 yesterday afternoon, and begins “Just to let you know”. Nothing good has ever followed those words.
9:30
Ring the school. The teacher is teaching. Leave a message with the office, who will write it on a Post-it that I can picture from here.
10:00
Home visit. Mum has tidied, and is cross with herself for having tidied, and tells me so before I have sat down. Her little boy shows me a plaster on his knee and the whole story of the plaster. I hear about the scooter, the kerb and a dog called Kevin who was nothing to do with it.
I am there to see how he is. He is telling me, at length, in his own way, and the knee is part of it.
11:15
In the car. Write it up while I can still hear his voice. Spell Kevin correctly.
11:40
The school rings back. I am driving. They leave a message.
12:10
Lunch is a meal deal at a red light. The crisps go everywhere at the amber.
1:00
A meeting of nine people about one child. Seven of us have met her. Two have read about her. The two who have read about her talk the most, and I say that with love, as I have been one of them.
The school nurse says something small and exact about what the girl eats at break. It changes the plan. It is nearly always the person who sees the child on an ordinary day.
2:30
Ring the school. The teacher has gone on a trip to a castle.
3:00
Supervision. My manager asks how I am. I say fine. She waits. I say the thing about the Thursday visit that I have been carrying round for a week like a stone in a shoe.
Nothing is solved. The stone is out of the shoe.
4:00
Recording. A form asks me to choose from a list the main reason for my involvement with a family. None of the eleven options is “it’s complicated”.
4:50
The school. At last. It was about a coat. He has not had one this week, and it has been cold, and the teacher noticed on Monday and again today.
So tomorrow there is a visit to make, and a conversation to have that starts with a coat and may be about a coat. It may be about money. It may be about something that a coat is the first sign of. I do not know yet. That is the job: a teacher noticed, and now somebody has to go and ask, kindly, and find out which.
5:35
Log off. The system would like to update.
What did not happen
Nobody was removed or rescued, and no door was kicked.
A boy told me about his knee, a nurse noticed a lunchbox, and a teacher noticed a coat. If the week goes well, none of it will ever be in a newspaper, and the boy with the plaster will remember the dog and not remember me at all.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: Should I become a social worker?