A violent meeting : A study about threats against social workers and the client as potential perpetrator

Social workers tend to find themselves in threatening situations associated with their clients. Threat and violence against social workers is not a new phenomenon but can instead be described as “a part of the work”. When clients turn to social services for help, they are automatically at a disadvantage and in order to receive help they need to submit themselves to a lot of demands. This can lead to a feeling of power impotence and not having power over your own life. If a person has a feeling of not being in power over his or her own life it can contribute to clients apprehending the social system as unfair and the frustration that comes with this feeling can lead to violent acts in hope of regaining the power. Studies also show that violence against social workers is something that is increasing and to deal with this organisations have developed certain guidelines for social workers to follow. The aim of this study is to examine these different guidelines in the organisations and to see how they affect the social worker, the client and their relationship. This study reviews different articles that discuss the issue and the study also reviews the guidelines for tackling this issue in seven different organisations. The result of the study shows that the guidelines contains tools for both organisation and the socialworker to manage threat and violence.The result also shows that the social worker is victimized but at the same time both power and advantage lies in the hands of the social worker