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The Baby P furore continued this month as reports surfaced that his killer already had a history of violent attacks on other children. The right-wing press has screamed blue murder that social workers involved did not do enough to save the child’s life when they had the chance.

This week, more criticism emerges from the chief executive of the NSPCC, Andrew Flanagan, who said that more at risk and abused children must be taken into care to avoid a repeat of the Baby P tragedy. Most people would be in agreement with Flanagan, but there are restrictions in place that make the job of social workers almost impossible.

Social workers operate in one of the toughest, most misunderstood public sector jobs there are. The Baby P incident is a case in point. Perhaps social workers should have spotted the signs that the child was at risk, and removed him from his mother’s care. The pressure on social workers, however, is so immense that it is hardly surprising that the tell-tale signs were missed.

In an anonymous feature in the Guardian’s Society section in 2008, a social worker blew the whistle on the state of social work in the UK. The main problem is that there simply are not enough people working in the ethical career to cope with the amount of work required. The author of the feature described how she was weighed down by endless paperwork, which had to be done to ensure that cases were recorded properly, but left social workers tied to their desks when they could be working with their clients. She described the lack of staff which meant that virtually no social worker could spend the required amount of time with each client’s particular problems and needs. Most of all, she described the lack of morale amongst overworked social workers, who, despite working long hours and being forced to neglect their own families, still could not deliver the services their clients needed.

It is not hard to see why the social care sector is overstretched; how many people out there aspire to become social workers? It is a job in which employees, it seems, can do nothing right in the eyes of the public. If children are not removed from their parents’ care in time, they have blood on their hands. If, however, they do remove at risk children, they face a backlash from the public for being too heavy-handed in interfering with families’ lives.

The case last year where two children were removed from their mother’s care illustrates this. The Daily Mail’s front page splashed on the story, focusing heavily on the fact that the children were placed with a gay male couple instead of their mother. Letters and comments on the Mail’s website flooded in, complaining at the inappropriateness of the selection of two gay men for the children’s carers. Little was made of the fact that the children’s mother was a heroin addict and that their father had died years beforehand. Whatever had been done in that situation, the social workers involved would have been blamed.

There is rarely positive coverage of social work in the media, as bad news always sells. For this reason, it is a sector crying out for dedicated employees, and only a real change in attitudes can help. If you think you are up to the task, and really want to make a difference to children in need, search JuicyJobs.biz for social work and other public sector jobs.