Hostile relationships in social work practice: anxiety, hate and conflict in long-term work with involuntary service users

Harry Ferguson,Tom Disney,Lisa Warwick,Jadwiga Leigh,Tarsem Singh Cooner,Liz Beddoe

doi:10.1080/02650533.2020.1834371

Abstract

ABSTRACT While recognition that some service users do not want social work involvement has grown in recent years, little research has explored what relationships between social workers and ‘involuntary clients’ look and feel like in practice and how they are conducted in real time. This paper draws from research that observed long-term social work practice in child protection and shows how relationships based on mutual suspicion and even hate were sustained over the course of a year, or broke down. Drawing on a range of psycho-social theories, the paper adds to the literature on relationship-based practice by developing the concept of a ‘hostile relationship’. The findings show how hostile relationships were enacted through conflict and resistance – especially on home visits – and how anxiety and other intense feelings were often avoided by individuals and organisations. Much more needs to be done to help social workers recognise and tolerate hostility and hate, to not retaliate and to enact compassion and care towards service users.

Highlights

At the heart of social work is a value base that urges practitioners to strive for relation ships with service users that are empowering and based on mutual respect
Recognition of involuntary clients and the complexity of such work has grown in recent years (Calder, 2008; Rooney, 2009; Trotter, 2015; Tuck, 2013)
What is mostly absent from the literature is attention to what ‘involuntary’ relationships look and feel like in practice and how they are conducted in real time

Summary

Introduction

At the heart of social work is a value base that urges practitioners to strive for relation ships with service users that are empowering and based on mutual respect. Verbal aggression and threats have been found to be commonplace and have detrimental consequences (Robson et al, 2014), while significant numbers of workers have felt that the impact of the violence and parental hostility on them was minimised and mismanaged by their managers and this adversely affected their practice and the quality of protection that children received (Hunt et al, 2016). Notions such as ‘respectful uncertainty’ (Laming, 2009) have been coined to try and capture the delicate balance of trust and doubt that social workers need to achieve. Fifteen months of fieldwork were spent with social workers, the first three months of which were used to identify a sample of 30 cases that were shadowed for as long as they were open for up to a year (Ferguson et al, 2019)

Discussion

Conclusion