The rush to blame someone or something for last week's Boston Marathon blast is on. Depending on what you read, it is the fault of President Obama, Alex Jones, the U.S. government (I refuse to link to an Alex Jones site), the bombers' parents, Islam, the sequestration, the FBI, immigration policy, and yes... wait for it... gay marriage.

But unlike some other tragic events of the past few years, it is evidently not the fault of those of us who work in social service systems. Evidently, the two brothers did not drift from foster home to foster home. Nor were their obvious mental health issues left untreated in an uncaring juvenile justice system. They evidently were not even seduced away from the sedentary life of welfare dependency by the excitement of evil. Although the younger brother was in college, I can't even find reference that someone is blaming the university's student counseling center for a failure to hospitalize a freshman who might have harbored an urge to blow up a city as revenge for his poor grades in political science. If the young man's friends didn't see this coming, the reasoning seems to be, you can't blame the professionals for not picking up on it either.

Years ago, as a  case worker, when a local story broke about a heinous crime, my first thought was, "I hope the perpetrator is not on my caseload." I didn't want to be associated with such a tragedy and frankly didn't want the scrutiny. In the case of tragedy, one's case files quietly disappeared to some lawyer's office upstairs. Even good social service can look suspect in retrospect once something bad has happened.

Overall, I am relieved that this Boston thing can't be blamed on a social care system. But, theoretically, tragedy can serve as an impetus for reform, even if it is not likely. Bad press can be better than no press at all. If my experiences in child welfare systems are representative, however, tragedy most typically translates into firing a perfectly competent administrator somewhere as a quick and dirty political fix.

Minus tragedy, who pays attention to quality issues in the social services?  Quietly, people in need are being ill-served by underpowered, insensitively delivered social care.  But who is going to notice? A quality revolution in the social services will require a spark. Will it be a tragedy upon our nations? A series of properly placed strong narratives? Damning data? An incisive graphic that goes viral? A heart wrenching photo?

For a week now, I have been both amused and appalled by how every special interest has turned the bombing into being about their issue. Now, I have done the same. This is either evidence that I am becoming a real blogger or that I have become a special interest. At the very least, I may have planted the next false flag theory for the conspiracy minded. It will be the social workers who did it.