Iva Frydrychová, Ester Poláčková
Iva Frydrychová is a PhD student at the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Arts, Charles University and has long been engaged in social work with families with children. She currently leads an organization that, among other things, provides social services to families at risk of social exclusion. In her dissertation, she deals with the possibilities and limits of the concept of social functioning in housing families with children based on the principle of Housing First. She teaches subjects focused on social work with the family and theories and approaches in social work at a higher vocational school.
Ester Poláčková is a PhD student in the field of Social Work at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, where she focuses on the topic of Domestic Violence. In the past, she worked in the organization proFem – Center for victims of domestic and sexual violence, o.p.s. as a social worker. She is now addressing the topic in her upcoming dissertation and as a participant in psychotherapy training.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The aim of the article is to summarize the situation in the field of domestic violence in social services in the Czech Republic and to describe the effect of working with traumatized clients on social workers. THEORETICAL BASE: As a theoretical starting point for working with victims of domestic violence, the authors use the publication “Domestic violence” (“Domácí násilí”) by the authors Ševčík and Špatenková, regarding the care of social workers from the publication Havrdová in the book Matoušek “Encyclopaedia of Social Work” (Encyklopedie sociální práce). In the case of the effects of working with a traumatized client, they draw on the work of American psychology professor Figley, C.R., “Compassion fatigue: Toward a new understanding of the costs of caring,” in the book B.H. Stamm (Ed.), “Secondary traumatic stress: Self-care issues for clinicians, researchers, and educators.” (pp. 3–28). METHODS: Literature review and theoretical analysis of key works in the field. OUTCOMES: The result is a description of the situation and the identification of weak points in the care of social workers in the field of domestic violence. SOCIAL WORK IMPLICATIONS: Implications for social work take the form of orienting the reader in the situation and appealing for a solution to an overlooked situation.
Keywords
domestic violence, persons at risk of domestic violence, social services, social worker, burnout syndrome, trauma, work with trauma, vicarious traumatization, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, prevention
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