ABSTRACT
Pithouse has noted ‘the invisible nature of social work’ as signifying the way in which encounters between professional and client frequently take place away from the public gaze. Unlike the doctor, the teacher, etc., a large amount of the work takes place in the client’s home. In contrast to home visits as a form of inspection, they can also form a service feature of social work, a gesture of outreach towards the client. It has been noted that there are few discourse studies of social work–client interactions, in particular exploring social work as an ongoing set of encounters concerned with a ‘helping relationship’. Baldock and Prior compare the nature of social worker-client talk to that of doctor–client talk. They are interested in exploring whether social workers were better at listening and responding to their clients than Byrne and Long found was the case with doctors.
