Place and the uncanny in child protection social work: Exploring findings from an ethnographic study

Abstract

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of child protection social workers in Britain, which explored social workers’ experiences of and practices in space and place. It draws on data from interviews with practitioners and observations that were carried out as social workers moved around the places (the town, estates, streets and areas around service users’ homes) where they worked. It focuses on the significance of a particular affective experience, the uncanny, which social workers evoked in many of their accounts of these places. The article introduces recent conceptualisations of space, affect and the uncanny before going on to consider data from the interviews. The following themes are explored: the relationships between the intimate spaces of service users’ homes and the neighbourhoods in which they were located; social workers’ accounts of feeling vulnerable in public and open spaces; social workers’ experiences of feeling unsettled by apparently mundane features of neighbourhood spaces. The article draws on critical engagements with the uncanny to consider its significance for child protection social work practice in Britain and its consequences in terms of social workers’ potential to work in emplaced and locally sensitive ways.

Hostile relationships in social work practice: anxiety, hate and conflict in long-term work with involuntary service users

“…Its absence arose from how fear and anxiety cause the self to become defended, which stops reflection in action and how this is compounded by the absence of help with critical reflection afterwards in supervision (Ferguson, 2018). Nor did it seem thinkable that sometimes these involuntary clients could be seen somewhere other than in their home, whereas this did happen in some cases we observed that involved cooperative relationships as parents and children were seen in community centres, parks, cafes, or in cars (Jeyasingham, 2018). The emotional impact of hostile relationships paralysed workers and organisations, restricting their minds and actions, confining them in highly constricted spaces where they and parents effectively enacted pathological relationships, taunting and punishing one another.…”

Do Numbers Always Matter: Review of Research Paradigms in Social Work

“…Вивчався емоційний, афективний досвід соціальних працівників щодо цих місць та мікрорайонів, де фахівці не завжди почували себе у безпеці, стосунків із людьми, від яких працівники відчували загрозу. Зрештою, було визначено, як цей негативний досвід впливає на потенціал працівників захищати дітей [15].…”

Working social assemblages: Towards a new geography of social work

“…Elsewhere, social work research is now emerging which engages more broadly with affects and atmospheres. Jeyasingham (), for example, explores the affective experiences of a range of settings which are part of child protection social work including towns, neighbourhoods, and streets. In particular, the author describes the “uncanny” feelings of vulnerability and unease felt outside clients' homes and how mundane material features—such as windows—take on new potential for social workers.…”

“…As part of the associated research endeavour, over recent decades, social work scholarship has drawn on, and deployed, various social science disciplinary perspectives, the closest engagement being with sociology (e.g., Heraud, ), but with political science (e.g., Gray & Webb, ), social psychology (e.g., Radey & Figley, ), economics (e.g., Gordon, ), and others being utilised to different extents, and in various ways. Despite this broad social science grounding, only occasionally however have there been explicit discussions of human geography in social work research and/or occasions where the discipline's ideas and conceptualisations have clearly been used (specifically—Carbone & McMillin, ; Galloway, Wilkinson, & Bissell, ; Hillier, ; Jeyasingham, , ; Schmidt, ; Wilkinson & Bissell, , , ; Zapf, , , , ), although, as we shall see, quite a lot of social work research is implicitly/loosely “geographical” in orientation.…”