Table of Contents

Introduction – the extent of violence against social workers.

The psychological impact of threat and violence on decision-making.

What practitioners can do to keep themselves safe. 

What organisations can do to keep staff safe.

What practitioners can do keep themselves safe in an incident

Post incident responses

Links to working with resistant families

Staff safety training

Working in non-responsive institutions

Summary of issues

About the Author

Brian Atkins BSc, CQSW, MBA is an experienced social work practitioner and manager and has worked in a range of social care services including children’s services fieldwork, child protection, residential care, leaving care services, family placement and youth offending. He has also worked as a policy and planning manager with an English local authority. 

Brian has worked as an independent consultant since 1996. His consultancy experience includes service review in a range of settings, including child protection, children looked after, criminal justice partnerships, youth offending, disability including learning disability. He has also led in the development of service user empowerment programmes, on systems review projects in social care and health organisations and in the construction of statutory plans.

Brian is also an experienced staff safety and managing challenging behaviour consultant, and is particularly interested in developing management approaches to this strategically important area.