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Anxiety and child protection – implications for practitioner–parent relations
Author(s) -
Waterhouse Lorraine,
McGhee Janice
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
child and family social work
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.912
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-2206
pISSN - 1356-7500
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2206.2009.00631.x
Subject(s) - child protection , anxiety , social work , psychology , context (archaeology) , psychoanalytic theory , poverty , developmental psychology , social psychology , psychotherapist , psychiatry , medicine , political science , nursing , law , paleontology , biology
Social work practitioners face powerful existential threats in child protection. Core aspects of anxiety and their significance for practitioner–parent relations are identified. Social and psychoanalytic theories are utilized to suggest that the production of anxiety in child protection stems from multiple sources and that insufficient attention has been paid to the social context of poverty and disadvantage. Menzies' core analytic categories of primary and secondary anxiety are applied and extended to take account of specific dimensions of the social and organizational context of child protection practice for social work. Processing the anxiety is central to practitioner–parent relations that lie at the heart of the protection of children.