Reporting Client Violence

Abstract

Much has been written about client violence against social workers; however, little attention has been given to reporting behavior of social workers who have been the target of such violence. The study discussed in this article documents the prevalence of client violence among a sample of social workers from a broad range of social work settings. It examines respondents' reasons for not reporting or for reporting client violence to management. A random sample of 300 social workers was mailed a questionnaire that examined these issues. A total of 171 questionnaires were returned, for a response rate of 57 percent. The majority of respondents had experienced some form of violence from clients. Approximately one-quarter of respondents indicated that they did not report an incident of violence perpetrated against them by a client.

The Effects of Violence and Aggression From Parents on Child Protection Workers’ Personal, Family, and Professional Lives

“…In another study, he found that 18% of such workers had been physically assaulted during their working career (Bowie, 1996). In North America, high rates of violence against social work staff were reported by Macdonald and Sirotich (2001), Jayaratne, Vinokur-Kaplan, Nagda, and Chess (1995), and Tully, Kropf, and Price (1993), with studies from other countries such as Iran (Padyab, Chelak, Nygren, & Ghazinour, 2012) also addressing this as a problematic area for social workers.…”

Violence in the workplace: awareness and prevention

“…Although these figures appear quite high, a variety of studies indicate that the incidence of occupational violence is under-reported (Barrett, 1997;Gates, 1995;Le Mar, Gerberich, Lohman & Zaidman, 1998;Macdonald, Sirotich, 2001;Rowett, 1986;Crane 1986). This may be particularly the case in health care settings for two major reasons, the first reason being that violence is seen by many health professionals as part of everyday professional life.…”

Validation de la version française canadienne du Perception of Prevalence of Aggression Scale auprès d’un échantillon d’intervenants en protection de la jeunesse1

“…Au plan individuel, l'ÉSPT s'avère être la conséquence psychologique la plus commune (Lanctôt et Guay, 2014). L'évaluation de la prévalence de ce phénomène devient essentielle, car le développement et le déploiement de stratégies de prévention et de soutien aux victimes sont tributaires d'une mesure plus adaptée (ou sensible) de la violence en milieu de travail (Dyrkacz, Mak et Heck, 2012;Macdonald et Sirotich, 2001). …”