ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the areas of violence and child abuse. It then turns to personal and professional development (PPD) and protective solutions and systems, and considers the consequences of stress: compassion fatigue, burnout and toxic systems. It considers that 'burnout' in context, and in particular to think of it as a relational process. The chapter includes all forms of supervision in the discussion: individual, group, peer, continuing professional development (CPD) and PPD, and supervision of supervision. There are many dilemmas for practitioners who work therapeutically with interpersonal violence, trauma responses and trauma-organised systems. Tensions can arise from constantly being asked to judge unpredictable behaviour. Practitioners can become isolated through not sharing their concerns and their resulting preoccupation with the family. This chapter aims speak about some of the difficulties that we know from experience practitioners have to deal with on a day to day basis when they work with child abuse and intra-family violence.
