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.

摘要

职业自我表露的话题在社会工作文献中受到的关注程度参差不齐。尽管许多作家和研究人员在临床社会工作的背景下讨论了该主题，但对其在儿童保护和儿童福利环境中的常规实践中的使用和作用的关注有限。这篇文章关注的是一种特定类型的自我披露：社会工作者对与他们一起工作的父母说他们自己是否是父母。它借鉴了一项关于儿童服务专业人员如何经历父母痛苦的研究的访谈材料，探讨了社会工作者在不同职位上投资于披露或拒绝披露其父母身份的心理社会动态。