The blind side of mild fear

Abstract

This paper aims to improve our understanding of social workers' fear, highlighting when and why mild fear might be helpful in social work practice, by drawing data from the author's own experience as a social worker and senior practitioner in the United Kingdom. The findings demonstrate that mild fear helps the social worker to better empathise with the child and to better understand the meaning of a specific child in a specific family. On the other hand, the findings emphasise that fear helps the social worker to acknowledge an actual or a potential danger, which requires consideration and careful planning in order to achieve the best outcomes for the children at risk. These findings are valuable for social work practice, indicating when and why mild fear helps and supports practitioners to acknowledge how important it is to make sense of emotions and to understand their relevance for the professional tasks.

Keywords:

• fear
• social worker
• professional task
• social work practice

Acknowledgement

My work has been supported by the European Social Fund in Romania, under the responsibility of the Managing Authority for the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007–2013, grant POSDRU/88/1.5/S/47646.