TALKING ABOUT CHILD PROTECTION: STRESS AND SUPERVISION

This article uses interviews with staff of a provincial social services office to illustrate the stress of child protection evoked by children, parents, and case responsibility including the strain of interrupted work, pressure to get decisions right, costs of getting them wrong, procedures, lack of time, and the secrecy and confusion especially of sexual abuse. Finally interviewees' observations are quoted to illustrate the importance social workers attach to talking and thinking out their cases with colleagues -especially supervisors -this depending on the security provided by regular uninterrupted supervision with someone able to contain the social worker's stress so that its otherwise chaotic and demoralising effects can be worked through to achieve effective practice. In all the furore about child abuse what of the stress suffered by social workers? It exacts an enormous toll on staff recruitment, morale, and wastage. Hence this study -an attempt to flesh out with individual cases previous questionnaire studies statistically relating stress, job satisfaction, and burn-out (see for example What emerged is the importance social workers attach to alleviating stress through talking about their work, with colleagues, particularly in supervision (see also Children Despite the child focus of their work, surprisingly few social workers immediately mentioned the stress posed by children themselves. A few did. Denise could hardly bear to tear herself away to talk to me so anxious was she about a child who had been phoning the office two days running' saying awful things are happening to her but refusing to give any identifying details. It left Denise, who often thinks of her own daughters in relation to her work, worrying lest something worse happen to this girl. Last night she had been kept awake racking her brains what more to do