Dynamics of professional parental status disclosure in child protection work

Abstract

The topic of professional self-disclosure has been subject to uneven levels of attention in the social work literature. Although many writers and researchers have addressed the topic in the context of clinical social work, there has been limited dedicated attention to its use and role in routine practice in child protection and child welfare settings. This article is concerned with a specific type of self-disclosure: what social workers say to the parents they work with about whether they themselves are parents or not. Drawing on interview material from a research study concerned with how children’s services professionals experience the suffering of parents, it explores the psycho-social dynamics of social workers investing in different positions about making or refusing to make disclosures about their parental status. This allows for differentiated insight into the contexts that surround parental status disclosure and highlights how decision making around whether and what to disclose can be led more by anxieties and concerns about the maintenance of a particular professional identity than deliberation about potential benefits to parents and the working relationship.

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