| Abstract [eng] |
The social work profession has experienced issues related to aggression, violence or conflicts between social workers and their clients for a long time. Studies also suggest that child protection service (CPS) workers are more likely to be assaulted by their clients than in any other social work profession and that these types of confrontations with clients can not only cause physical harm to employees, damage employee property but also directly affect the quality of their work, their professional self-esteem (Shin, 2011). There hasn’t been enough research that would analyze the possible manifestations of aggression from child protective services that occur during the child removal from a family in Lithuania. Therefore, this study will try to reveal the connections, differences and assumptions of aggression manifestations that were mentioned by the three informant groups that were directly involved in the child removal situations - children, parents and CPS. The analysis of literature that was done in this study helps to understand the influence and possible harm to children and their parents / legal representatives that might occur after removing children from their families. Literature analysis was used in order to understand the effects of aggression and violent type of behavior coming from different perpetrators: aggressive actions of the client against employees and actions of employees against clients. The effects of aggression transfer in client-social worker relationships are also discussed. It is discussed that social work clients who may have experienced verbal aggression from CPS themselves, were statistically more likely to direct their verbal aggression toward employees later on (Ringstad, 2009). It is visible from CPS job descriptions that many child rights protection specialists in Lithuania and around the world have a degree in social work education, that is why it can be stated that this study is especially relevant in order to understand the manifestations of possible aggression and their respective assumptions in the CPS work practice. In order to find out more about this phenomenon, which doesn’t have a lot of studies done in Lithuania, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted and the codes, consisting manifestations and preconditions of possible aggression, were extracted from their transcripts. The study used interviews with 19 CPS workers ('advocates' and 'on duty' CPS), 10 parents with child removal experience in the past and 10 adults with childhood experiences of being removed from their families. The analysis of this study data has revealed that during the removal of a child from the family, CPS workers have exhibited aggression towards their clients of psycho-verbal and physical origin, which emerged through specific actions (threats, bullying, etc.) or abstract, subtle changes in communication with family members. Depending on the group of informants, different emphases on assumptions of manifestations were also visible: CPS saw external characteristics of preconditions as more important, while parent and child informant groups highlighted internal preconditions as more prominent. |
