ABSTRACT

In working with children, we devise, or more often improvise on the spur of the moment, all kinds of ways for reducing the tensions inherent in the one-to-one situation. Of course in any agency dealing with children, work with parents and others will always be an important part of the social worker's job, and this work can bring real relief to the children. But in regard to the children themselves, we have to face two facts. The first is that, as we know only too well, the amount of psychotherapy available is minute in comparison to the need for it. The social worker with children is therefore in a strategic position in their lives because she is in touch with a total situation representing a totality of experience. The social worker with children has to be rather an agile person moving as quickly as the children move backwards and forwards from the world of fact to the world of fantasy.