Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Linda

You're right to record the gravity of hazards to which many social workers are exposed.

An experienced psychiatrist I know regularly insists - that is the word - on a police escort whenever she personally assesses that she is exposed to a risk at a level where she feels uneasy. This is after she was exposed in her last job to a direct threat with a machete in her office in the hospital she works in. With my assistance she wrote - citing the releavnt HSE and HSE regs - directly to the Chief Executive to ask for his assurance that she and the dozens of staff she was responsible for would in future be safeguarded from such risks; when he failed to reply within a month, she successfully went to work elsewhere and has faced less risk of physical violence.

Regrettably, unless staff 'work to rule' and insist their employers provide the statutory safeguards to which they're entitled, such foreseeable deaths and injuries will continue.