ABSTRACT
The CAT moved the response out of the futile cycle of palliative help interspersed with crises involving the police and emergency hospital treatment; help which had had no effect on the client’s drinking. As a result of blocking this ineffective help and supporting the agent instead to make a more direct response to the client’s drinking, the CAT probably helped to prevent the children being taken into care. The intensity of the threat to professional self-esteem was perhaps best demonstrated in that when the social worker felt a failure, she avoided not only the client, but the CAT as well. The encouragement of CAT to plug away at the case when all seemed hopeless was dramatically justified in the end. Because the CAT’s aim was primarily to test the feasibility of initiating systems of role support, the lessons learned were largely in how to actually begin the process; how to help agents break out of negative cycle of role insecurity.
