The recent tragic events involving Sarah Everard brought into sharp focus the potential risks affecting women in particular. It also reminded me of the risks facing social workers in the course of their daily task visiting children and families in the community. Hopefully the easing of lockdown restrictions will enable social workers to engage in more face to face work. This is vital and welcome but workers and employers need to be aware that it has the potential to bring additional risk.

The safety of social workers, health workers and other social care staff has been a concern of mine for many years. As a practitioner in children’s social care I received threats, intimidation and actual violence myself.  Like many others, I used to think it was part of the job , but came to realise with more experience that it was not acceptable .

Feeling safe at work is essential for social care and health workers to enable them to do their job properly. The task of relationship building, assessment and decision making depends on the worker being able to work calmly without undue stress. This is important for individuals and families as well as workers to get the best understanding of their needs. A worker who is feeling insecure or frightened is not able to function effectively, and poor decisions may be made as evidenced in a number of Serious Case Reviews.

There have been many initiatives to address this issue from the government task force in the 1999, and campaigns led by Community Care magazine. There has been some recognition of the importance of the issue and a safe working environment is required by the current Standards for Employers of Social Workers 2020. I am aware however that attention to staff safety at work is very variable and many practitioners feel themselves to be personally at risk in the course of their jobs.

My book was developed from these concerns and is still relevant to the task today, including general risk awareness for lone practitioners and also those in specific social work based situations. I believe that the issues covered would benefit from being discussed in team and management meetings as part of planning for the return to normal practise from the coronavirus pandemic.

Brian Atkins is the author of Personal Safety for Social Workers and Health Professionals, Critical Publishing