Social workers are NOT experts! If you face an allegation of child abuse, or domestic violence or rape, you may find those who would suggest you use only a social worker as your defense expert. This is BAD advice. In my more than 26 years of work on such cases I have encountered hundreds of social workers almost all of who seem to have very strident opinions on subjects for which they have little or no education, at least no substantive education beyond inappropriate use of mental health buzz words.

The sad part is that lawyers and judges are often taken in by these pseudo professionals. I have nothing against social workers who do social work. Almost none of them will confine themselves to their own discipline. (I am speaking of those with a degree in social work now, not just state case workers.) Social workers on the witness stand have claimed to know more than a geneticist about DNA evidence and interpretation. I have seen an MSW argue with one of the leading researchers in the world and claim "he doesn't know what he's talking about." I have seen social workers claim in cases of alleged rape of a young child, when confronted with the fact of an undisturbed hymen, claim that "it grew back" and when a pediatrician testified that this was impossible, the social worker came back to claim that she had vastly more knowledge about this than the doctor, and that regrown hymens are "well known in the literature."). (The hymen does NOT grow back!)

Selecting a defense expert is not as simple as it may sound. First you need to learn what the alphabet soup after names means. What does each discipline teach? And, for example, you need to know that all psychologists weren't created equal. What kind of psychologist? There are clinical psychologists, social psychologists, educational psychologists, research psychologists and the list goes on. And then it gets even more complicated, a psychologist or even medical doctor may be excellent at testifying as to certain sets of facts, but poor at others. Matching the right expert to the case is the trick. Knowing which pegs are round and which are oblong and which are triangular shaped and making sure they find the right holes is where a real trial consultant comes in as opposed to those who just call themselves "trial consultants" or something similar.

Beyond mere technical expertise, the skill at testifying is a factor to consider. How will the doctor play in Milwaukee or Jackson, Mississippi? Personality is a factor. The region the expert will testify in is an important factor. There are dozens of criteria to match in a case to make sure your expert is best able to answer the key questions at trial. And be able to defend their answers in a compelling way. Sorry, but you have to look hard at what the various disciplines are and are not. Social work is NOT a science, no matter how much individual practitioners may claim that it is.

The choice of experts in a case of alleged sexual misconduct is crucial. Along with selecting the right lawyer, the use of really qualified experts is one of the most critical elements of a case. An expert, like a lawyer, can be great on some kinds of cases, and poor on others. Care should be given not to put square pegs in round holes. Social workers in these cases are always square pegs for round holes when examining forensic issues. This may not make the National Association of Social Workers happy with me. But it is my opinion based on considerable experience. If only we could get social workers to practice social work.

Social workers can and do do a great deal of damage by their incompetence. The field of social work has been blown all out of proportion to their actual training, yet social workers are doing many things, such as "evaluations" and "therapy" which was once confined to psychologists and psychiatrists, which wouldn't necessarily be so bad if they weren't doing it so badly? Social workers prove on a daily basis that "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing." The cost is ruined families, and the ruined lives of children. While science has come a long way in helping the human mind, the best that psychology and psychiatry can do is put a Band-Aid over the injuries. The damage done by zealots in the field of social work can't be undone. The damage can be minimized but it is permanent. The social worker really has no concept of the harm done when a child is yanked from their home when it isn't absolutely necessary. Many don't really even care.

Social Work has brought us all sorts of "syndromes" and maladies that really don't exist. They have built entire cottage industries for themselves. They find the disease, and they have the only magic cures for them. They practice medicine without the basis of any medical training. They practice psychology without any training.

Social Workers have brought all sorts of voo doo science to the subject of child welfare. Social workers have told us that 'children never lie." I think this was invented so easily because so many social workers have never had children to know better. Social workers and their followers tell us that children never should be disciplined or spanked. As they make these great pronouncements they never examine the consequences of their proclamations, such as a rise in psychopathy that has run in almost perfect relation to the decline in parental discipline and involvement. If we look at the things social workers in private practice routinely do today in 2002, it helps to realize that if they were doing the same sorts of things in 1962 they would be arrested and sent to jail for doing them. Over the years social work has crept into the mental health field by appealing to two facets of our society that have become problems in the past 50 years. The first is political correctness. By appealing to mass hysteria, using every propaganda technique known, social work has elbowed its way into the mental health arena. And secondly the greed factor of some psychologists and psychiatrists who take a cut of the social worker's practice, which can be impressive. With helping so many people "recover" memories of sexual abuse, satanic rituals, sexual abductions in flying saucers and past lives of being Napoleon or an Indian princess, the bucks can roll in at a rate fast enough to cauterize the conscience of the greedier psychologists and psychiatrists amongst the professions. Of course the malpractice lawsuits that have started have had some impact on the number of doctors willing to look the other way at this quackery.