ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the work history of psychiatric social workers, with the general question, what happens to such workers after they finish training. There are several different fields open to them after qualification both within and outside the field of mental health, and in view of the heavy demands made on the mental health services their actual distribution between these services is of considerable interest. The wastage from the profession is related then not directly to the marriage level, but to the level of marriages with at least one child under ten. If we take full-and part-timework together we see that as the children of the married P.S.W’s grow older there is a return to professional work. The chapter describes certain important aspects of the working careers of psychiatric social workers: the movement between posts and different fields of work, marriage and child care as factors in mobility and turnover, the geographical distribution of workers.
