Does social workers’ personal experience with violence in the family relate to their professional responses, and how?

Abstract

The study examines if and how social workers’ personal experience with violence in the family relates to their professional responses to children's exposure to domestic violence and physical abuse. Four case vignettes depicting situations of physical child abuse and of children witnessing abuse of their mothers were responded to by 106 Slovene social workers. Their ratings of perceived risk to the child, responsibility for endangerment of the child and support for a range of interventions were correlated with their self-reported frequencies of receiving corporal punishment, witnessing father's violence against mother and experiencing violence from a husband/intimate partner in their private lives. While corporal punishment in social workers’ childhoodswas linked to favouring children's protection, social workers’ histories of intimate partner violence were associated with perceiving lower risks to children exposed to domestic violence and physical child abuse. Social workers who had personally experienced violence from their parents and intimate partners were most reluctant to suggest shelter for battered women and children, parent counselling, or notification to the police. The results highlight the importance of addressing the influence of personal experiences of violence on professional judgements, through supervision and other programmes supporting quality in social work with children exposed to violence in their families.