ABSTRACT
Social worker child protection practice in cases of the familial sexual abuse of adolescent girls is shaped by a multiplicity of factors relating to administrative requirements and governmental injunctions. This chapter seeks to examine the ways in which these various ’personal’ factors contribute to the workers’ management of personal and professional ‘risk’ and the influence they have on their child protection practice. A. Pithouse indicates social workers tend to accomplish their day to day tasks through reference to ‘rarely stated motives and taken for granted assumptions’. The social workers’ training comprised two distinct elements; the initial training and education they received in qualifying, and their ongoing in-service training and professional development education. The degree of understanding the social workers had of child sexual abuse had a clear impact upon how useful they felt their initial training had been in terms of dealing with specific sexual abuse cases.
