The retrenchment experience: The impact on social work

Abstract

This article is taken from an address to the annual Department of Social Security (DSS) Senior Social Workers' Victorian State Conference in April 1992. The author's personal experience of retrenchment and of implementing retrenchment counselling training for managers gives authenticity to the feelings described, the tasks facing the retrenched person, the impact on the ‘survivors’ in our organisation and on the family of the retrenched person. The implications for social work with retrenched people is discussed with particular reference to those in Social Security regional offices. Social work skills must respond to the needs of the ‘new’ clients Social Security is serving, and social work educators should be addressing the reality of unemployment in course work for students. We need to address this area of work within the context of the current economic climate. Regrettably it may be that social workers can offer limited assistance, given that so many retrenchees will face a bleak future in terms of actual re-employment. Social workers must retain their sense of reality also when counselling these clients.