Dangerous Work

I was pleased to see this article from the New York Times, Killing in Texas Spotlights Attacks on Social Workers; it's about time that gets some attention. When I worked as a child protective social worker
threats and fear were considered part and parcel to the job. Seasoned workers had a repertoire of stories concerning the clients who threatened to kill them/clients who tried to fight them/the situations they walked into
that they should have been walking out of, and more. I heard more than my share of these stories, because it was most fun to share them with green young white new workers- for which I was the poster child.

One story involved a worker that used the two year old child he was holding as a shield from the child's father who tried to attack him. Another tough, large female worker told me a story about running into her client in the
grocery store. In her words, the client got all up in her face, wanting to fight, so the investigator ripped off her own badge and returned the challenge. The client backed off- you would to if you were faced with that particular investigator.

A study released last week by the National Association of Social Workers found that 55 percent of 5,000 licensed social workers surveyed said they faced safety issues on the job. Sixty-eight percent of them said their employers had not adequately addressed their concerns. A survey in 2002 of 800 workers found 19 percent had been victims of violence and 63 percent had been threatened.

There was often mutterings about whether we could get "hazardous duty" benefits (like the police have- getting to retire after 20 years) as we were regularly expected to go places and enter situations, alone, that cops did with guns and partners. When I requested to bring another worker along I often got ridiculed by my supervisor, and I also felt like a jerk, dragging a coworker with cases of their own with me to the apartment of a drug-addicted client in the projects who was likely to slam the door in our faces. I had a coworker that resorted to bringing her husband along on some frightening home visits.

The times when workers arranged to do visits in conjunction with the police also proved aggravating. The police often showed up a couple hours after the worker was expecting them, and their role was never clear. About a month after I started the job, I went out with another worker on a domestic violence case. The worker and I were helping a woman move out of her abusive husband's house. I went along to speak Spanish with the woman. The worker and I thought it would be a situation in which we picked up a few bags of her and her baby's stuff and moved on. However, the client had another idea. She took this opportunity to basically strip the house of everything- from the sheets on the bed to the pans in the kitchen cabinet. This took a long time, and was not enjoyable, both because it was 90 degrees outside and she lived on the third floor, and because the abusive husband and 3 or 4 of his male relatives glared at us, the entire time, as we trooped up and down the stairs. On this occasion, a policeman was present- sort of. The policeman sat outside in his car and watched us also, for about an hour, and then he came in and said his shift was over and he was taking off, but the abusive guy that was sitting on the porch, staring us down, would not be a problem. Thanks a lot, we said.

Often, child protective social workers are expected to enter into situations that are comically dangerous; for example, I was supposed to give a ride to court to the client I was bringing into court to testify against in order to remove her children. The client decided not to come to court, thankfully- the possibility of that drive going well would have been a hell of a lot less likely than it ending in violence.

So my question is, why are police awarded for the dangerous nature of their work (and I respect that- they do not have an easy job) and social workers historically not acknowledged? One possibility is that social workers are mainly women, and women often do not receive the pay or benefits men are likely to, nor would the work they are doing be recognized in the same way as perilous. Another possibility is that people do not want to acknowledge the depth and severity of societal problems that require social workers, and in what a dangerous state society is actually in due to those problems.