Reflections: a Crisis Learning Experience

Abstract

Social workers can face the most unpredictable crisis situations for the most unusual reasons. During my very first social work visit, the father of the family approached me along the hallway with a rapidity of movement and a meanness in his eyes which betrayed his violent intent. He was big and strong and crude, and I held up my hand in a gesture of total submissiveness, and apologised if I was calling at an inconvenient time. I quickly retreated. Some time after, I met my predecessor for this particular case. He told me he had treated this family abominably-unintentionally of course. There was no explicit mention of this in the file, but a more careful reading revealed the sources of his admission, and clearly exposed the dangerously deteriorating relationship between them. The result was the client’s almost pathological hatred of social workers and social services.