Professionals working with child abuse victims : the risk of secondary trauma

Abstract

Social workers, psychologists and police officers are necessarily obliged by the nature of their profession to attend and listen carefully to their traumatized clients. For them to be able to do this it is of utmost importance that a relationship is established, in order for the client to feel in a safe holding environment. Although this relationship is a professional relationship during its course the clients discuss intimate and personal issues. The discussion of these issues can strongly influence the development of the therapeutic relationship. The introduction explains how this dissertation was devised so as to analyse if social work, psychology and police professionals are affected by listening to the personal tragedies of their clients, thus undergoing the effects of secondary trauma, The coping strategies of these professionals were also of interest to the researcher. In the literature review the importance of the professionals' awareness of countertransference is discussed as if countertransference is not used appropriately and remains unexamined it can lead to secondary trauma, where it can damage both the client and the worker. Secondary trauma results if the client's traumatic event has a major impact on the helping professional, causing the professional' s identity and his or her usual ways of understanding him/herself and the perception of looking at the world to become altered. This chapter, examines how these helping professionals can manage to address such trauma in a constructive manner where they can improve both their work with their clients and enhance the quality of their personal and professional lives. The third chapter provides a description of the methodology used for this study which was based on a triangulation approach. Throughout this research the researcher focused on using both the qualitative and quantitative approach in order to gain a better understanding of the helping professionals' feelings and thoughts regarding secondary trauma. To acquire such understanding, a semi-structured interview was held and a questionnaire together with a case study were also provided to the participants. While comparing the findings with the literature review it was discovered that these professionals, namely social workers, psychologists-and police officers, are rather susceptible to undergo secondary trauma. However it was found that although it is inevitable to suffer from physical, emotional and psychological effects there are ways and means which help them overcome such trauma. The conclusion emphasises the importance of increasing awareness about secondary trauma both from the workers' end and especially from Agencies and police corps point of view.