This yet again demonstrates what Francis Bacon, the 16th century English statesman and philosopher meant when he observed that 'knowledge is power'. Social defences and organisational culture in a local authority child protection setting: Challenges for the Munro Review? While the above examples illustrate how social workers may consciously channel their anger into challenging parents, the danger is that they unconsciously return the hate service users have projected into them and become punitive but are not aware of it. endstream endobj 30 0 obj <>/Metadata 15 0 R/Pages 25 0 R/Type/Catalog>> endobj 31 0 obj <>/ExtGState<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC]/XObject<>>>/Rotate 0/Type/Page>> endobj 32 0 obj <>stream This was discussed with the senior manager in a research interview straight after the supervision: Researcher: Olivia said she didnt want to talk any more about what happened in that situation with Roberta because shed only get upset again. Social workers at times raised their voices, argued with and talked over the parents. I am not. While social work literature and policy stress the importance of user engagement and working in partnership, the reality is that most social work relationships are involuntary (Smith et al., Citation2012, p. 1462) because the person receiving the service does not freely enter into it. Indeed, the secret of our temporality is expressed by social work. The paper draws on a range of psycho-social theories to show the complex dynamics of hostile relationships, the emotional demands they place on social care staff and service users and the impact on individual workers, teams and organisations of working with or avoiding such hostility (Holway, Citation2015). The pattern was for social care workers to ask Roberta questions about baby care and other practical things like housing, but there was little attention to her feelings about and relationship with the baby. However, they were not really aware of the primitively anxious nature of their surveillance, the splitting and framing of the mother as a dangerous bad object and the effect of this on the mother and baby. A client can "fire" a therapist at any time for any reason no ifs, ands, or buts whereas a therapist can't ethically abandon a client without making an effort to transition the therapy to another provider. They constitute some of the most important forms of regulatory power and means by which society maintains itself. The policing of conventions is in the hands of institutional power holders such as social workers, lawyers and teachers. It remains open whether they inspire contradiction in the reader or find confirmation. If because social worker A has written down in official files that Mr Jones is unpleasant, and B, C and D read it, (and because it is an official report it has authority and thus likely to be believed), then B, C and D social workers will be suspicious of Mr Jones and prone to exercise their professional powers in a tougher way than they might have done if he had been described as friendly. Professionals need much more training to help them learn strategies that defuse these potentially explosive relationships, recognise their role in co-constructing the hostility, and how to work through resistance and engage with children and parents in respectful, reciprocal ways (Smith et al., Citation2012; Turnell & Essex, Citation2006; Turney, Citation2012). Tew (2006) It is important to note, however, that the nature of therapeutic relationships does often involve an imbalance of intimate sharing. Schlter 1995, p. 116). As Rajchman (1985) points out "In his book on prisons, the historical constitution of the subject becomes a problem not simply about knowledge, but about power, and not simply about discourse but about practice." This is extremely difficult for professionals to do when they are constantly under attack by service users and rage and hate are projected into them. Social work practitioners and managers walk a very delicate line between acknowledging how emotionally demanding and sometimes deeply distressing the work is and not showing that distress and the effects it has on them. Foucault develops a model of subjectivity based on "the Nietzschean idea of the nonfinalized problematization of the forms through which the experience of the subject is constituted" (Rajchman, p.124). Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab. On the one hand they feel obliged to treat clients in a disengaged and technical way, in order to establish that their interest is purely professional when discussing personal and sensitive issues such as sexuality. In the sense of the English "power", power is related to strength and energy, or, based on the Latin "potentia", power also means possibility. So, and she, I felt, chose, and it seemed OK to come to the supervision and she didnt want in that setting to be upset and so I sort of thought, well maybe thats OK, I dont want to press her on that. The fact that members of the helping professions, but first and foremost clients, can feel powerless, helpless, is a recognized and accepted feeling. Intimacy helps you feel connected in your relationship. She sort of laughs dismissively when she looks at things. It is in this sense that social work as a practice pre-figures the recognition of mood and activity in social life and thus incorporates what might be called a phenomenology of affect. The word power here also means force, ability and "serves first of all to define more closely a social relationship which is characterized by the fact that persons or institutions are able to influence the behavior of other persons or institutions also independently of their will. Therapists don't have psychological X-ray vision, they are not mind-readers, and if one claims to know what's in your unconscious it's probably because he or she put it there! There are only people with various educations, skills, abilities, knowledge bases, social/political positions, and degrees of wealth. Similarly, for Foucault freedom is not subjective, instead it is a "clearing" of possibilities for thought and action which take place in a particular mode of temporality; what I called above a disposition towards "open-ness" within contingent circumstances. The Family Support worker based in the team also made eight home visits, while the intensive family support service (external to the local authority) made 21 visits in a short period at the end of the year of casework we shadowed. Creating space to think and feel in child protection social work; a psychodynamic intervention, The impact of work-related violence towards social workers in children and family services, Sustaining relationships: Working with strong feelings: Part l: Anger, aggression and hostility, Engaging with involuntary service users in social work: Findings from a knowledge exchange project, Challenges and dilemmas working with highconflict families in child protection casework, Understanding defences and defensiveness in social work, Resistant parents and child protection: Knowledge base, pointers for practice and implications for policy, A relationship-based approach to engaging involuntary clients: The contribution of recognition theory, What makes it so hard to look and to listen? Another example of power behind discourse might be the assessment procedures of children who are considered at risk of sexual abuse. The basis for this was pragmatic in that feelings were suppressed and suspended self-preservation practiced due to the need to keep going to ensure the work got done; and it was psychological, unconscious and defensive arising from the need for organisations as well as individuals to defend the self from unbearable feelings (Cooper & Lousada, Citation2005; Whittaker, Citation2011). Assuming the existence of power in social work, and indeed its justification, this thesis will deal primarily with asking why. Connect with your NASW Chapter to find local action groups leading the way on achieving equity. to succeed then This example points to power that is expressed by knowledge bases, techniques and education which is an important condition of professional identity, authority and practice. Sign up for this free e-newsletter for a daily round-up of the top media stories affecting the social work profession. Unfortunately, because some people suffer from issues related to excessive dependency and have deep-seated rejection and abandonment anxiety, they are ripe for exploitation if they end up under the care of unethical (if not criminal) clinicians. Seven minutes into the visit Roberta moves forward and picks the baby up. Therefore, it was necessary to investigate this issue. We regularly observed a culture of attentiveness and mutual support amongst staff and relationships were collegial. The parents Ron and Angela didnt like it, but it enabled the worker to see the children with whom she had a good relationship. We must build upon the good social workers have done in the fight for civil rights, health care access, child protection, the War on Poverty and marriage equality by working more intentionally to elevate Black, Brown, and Indigenous lives in the communities we serve. These factors pre-structure the power-domain of social workers in general; as such, they are capacity-giving factors. Of course, it could be argued that the massive imbalance of wealth on this planet is a huge power disparity because with money comes a certain power of influence. Knowing general causes, backgrounds and connections enable me to grasp and assess the client's problem situation, as well as his strengths, resources and limitations. But research published in the BMJ Quality & Safety indicates that these power imbalances arent going away. Washington, DC 20002. As a Social work is helping, is supporting. 7 ways to rebuild your faith in humanity. This paper has presented what the research shows about the nature of hostile relationships in social work and how enormously difficult it is for all concerned to begin, develop and sustain them over time. When interviewed during month seven of the research Mrs Jones was scathing: it was uncomfortable and it has got worse and worse the longer it has gone on. The constraints on the settings of risk assessment are particularly significant in attempting to guarantee that the encounter is a professional one. Roberta Dixon had two children, who were not in her care but resident with their relatives for the past two years, and she saw them occasionally. Schlter 1995, p. 116). It involves using empathic skills and self-knowledge on the part of the social worker (Trevithick, 2003 ). But yeah its a hard balance between, and then youre just avoiding it and lets move on and thats not intelligent, thats just kind of colluding with shutting that sort of discussion down and that emotion down. The object, in this case the record of a meeting, indicates that work has been done. This little speech is not likely to achieve a warm or co-operative relationship with a parent. But even in this case we make changes. It is precisely their recognition of our potential power that causes them to do or not to do something. Examples of each of these dimensions are easily found in social work practice. Mood is either an expansion or contraction of one's scope for action in relation to others. 48 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/ID[<34084BC7F182434D9F460EA11BD66545><6F245B4E13675940B38B739BDB8C44F8>]/Index[29 44]/Info 28 0 R/Length 97/Prev 225288/Root 30 0 R/Size 73/Type/XRef/W[1 3 1]>>stream It is the latter kind of work and hostile relationship that is the focus of this paper, which has two aims: to draw on case-studies of long-term casework with involuntary clients to show what it looks like, feels like and involves for both social workers and service users; and secondly, to add to the literature on relationship-based practice by developing the concept of a hostile relationship. Ultimately however, the emotional support provided was compromised by the managers regulatory role and their need to address issues such as staff performance, timescales and targets for completing work. Through empathetic, strengths oriented practice and skilful use of relationship-based practice, some of these parents were helped to transform ambivalence and hostility into a capacity for cooperation, care and love and they and their children thrived together (for extended examples, see Ferguson, Warwick,Disney, et al., Citation2020). Olivia was observed in supervision that week with her senior manager, who recognised that she was upset but did not pursue this with her, instead moving on to address other high risk cases and staff performance issues in the team Olivia managed. The view, for example, that subjectivity is open-ness and contingent within a field of temporal relations as expressed by phenomenological thinkers, suggests that there are as many forms of subjective being as there are forms of time (see Mensch, 1996). However, it must be recognized that power is not just about change in the above sense, but is often about maintaining the status quo in the face of a threat of change. Sex differences in marriage and single life: Still debating after 50 years. After this meeting the professionals feared that Roberta would act out her anger on her daughter. We had no way of knowing at the outset how long the 30 cases (15 at each site) we sampled would be open for and in the event 12 were shadowed for the full 12months, one for eleven and 22 were shadowed for at least eight months. Ongoing self-reflection, conversations with colleagues, education, professional training and advocacy are the best ways to ensure we all live the anti-racist principles required of our profession. Fifty-four staff supervisions were observed and 54 interviews took place with families, some of which involved up to three interviews with the same families over the course of the year. Niklas Luhmann, as a systems theorist, understands power rather as a symbolically generalized communication medium and thus means the possibility of selecting an alternative for others by one's own decision and thus reducing complexity (cf. She shows no excitement or pleasure at meeting the baby. It is service users who typically are characterised as hard to reach, resistant, difficult, but the social care staff were also often emotionally detached and unwilling or unable to tolerate and reach the parents and children. The recording process detaches the author from what s/he writes such that we often say of some judgment in a report not "Ms Susan Social-Worker says here ?. " Roberta showed her feelings as soon as the two social workers arrived and were parking up, by standing on the doorstep and then forcefully slamming the door to her house. The concerns surrounded neglect of the three children, aged 6, 8 and 10. People with narcissistic personalities may behave differently than non-narcissists, such as shunning introspection and denying mistakes. WebThe imbalance of power in the CPS-parent relationship is a central aspect of the relation-ship. There was a deep investment in not showing or fully feeling what was there deep down to be felt. It is crucial to recognise however the role the service user played in placing the professionals either in an upright, standing position, gazing down at her, or crouching or sat on the floor with her gazing down at them. Yvonne Roberts argues that if joint working is. Because Robertas two children were not in her care, it was treated as an Unborn referral and not urgent. As Brett Kahr (Citation2020) shows, when Winnicott (Citation1949) first published his work on hate in the counter-transference there was considerable resistance to it within psychoanalysis and the idea that therapists sometimes hated their clients, but this is now a fully accepted part of psychotherapeutic knowledge.
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