Maid, a Netflix series gaining enormous acclaim, offers a superb starting point—for social workers, practitioners, and the general public—for necessary, authentic examination of domestic abuse and violence. The engrossing drama is a fictionalized account of the suffering, grit, and determination of a young mother, Alex, played by the multi-talented Margaret Qualley, and supported by a skilled supporting cast. The opening scene highlights Alex’s dangerous middle-of-the-night escape from an abusive relationship, clutching her 3-year-old daughter, Maddy, played by the endearing Rylea Nevaeh Whittet in her first film. Alex has $18.00 to her name, a battered car, and a future devoid of secure love and safety.

 

Maid is one story. However, as social workers, we know that people of all ages, races, genders, and range of socioeconomic opportunity experience the brutality and ravages of domestic violence.

 

Created by gifted writer Molly Smith Metzler (whose credits include Orange Is the New Black and Shameless), the script was inspired by author Stephanie Land’s best-selling memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, a true depiction of an escape from torment and the ability to survive by becoming a maid. (See The New Social Worker’s book review of Land’s real-life memoir.)

 

Newly released and broadly viewed, the 10-segment Netflix mini-series offers testimony that well-acted drama educates and informs. By showing a mom and daughter viewers care about and relate to, the series’ focus is domestic violence intensified by poverty, untrustworthy parenting—and what clients with no resources face in an endlessly flawed, contradictory, grossly inadequate, and impersonal, bureaucratic system. This portrayal offers viewers insight into the pain and fear of those abused, as well as the maddening administrative quagmire of the so-called “helping system.”

 

Through this exposure, the series introduces viewers to rarely depicted truths about our professional responsibilities, frustrations, and overload—all that makes us heart and soul sick—and why social work has been called “an impossible profession,” where burnout is ever in the wings: We see endless pain, suffering, and the impact of grave inequities and prejudice. We are surrounded by people in powerful positions and their enablers, who refuse to provide a path of hope and promise to society’s most vulnerable children and families, our clients. When asked by those who care about us how our day has been, we do not have words to respond. Who, other than other social workers, can really understand? We do not want to burden anyone, so with regularity, we change the subject.

 

Viewers meet Alex’s first “social services” worker, with a seemingly cold exterior—a defense we understand all too well. It is born of facing countless who are impoverished seeking hope and help through an inadequate, contradictory system that cruelly withholds sustaining resources. 

 

 

 

• Order from Amazon.com
  

 

Now available in a black & white edition, too.

 

A perfect companion to Danna Bodenheimer's first book, Real World Clinical Social Work: Find Your Voice and Find Your Way.

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