ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on social workers’ narrative constructions of client categories as part of presenting their work as professional, as accountable and as competently handling crisis and institutional intervention. It raises the question of an alternative account, one which centres on the client’s experiences during the height of crisis and after the child had been removed (the visits at the foster home, the case conferences, the counselling and other steps that need to be taken to get the child to return home). The analysis will concentrate on three themes: the client’s expectations when inviting an intervention, her responses to social workers’ interpretations and her challenge and qualification of the diagnostic categories. Clients, like professionals, do work which displays the complexity of the situation in which they find themselves. The chapter offers a widely sampled review of client perspectives in the area of child protection.
