Social workers encounter people in difficult situations, and sometimes this can lead to dangerous situations. There are numerous examples of employees working within social service, child protection service, et cetera, ending up in dangerous situations or even being severely injured or killed by clients. This is a difficult topic, and although mentioned in training of communication skills, risk-management is not prominent in social work-education in Norway.

Discourse among professionals and educators in the field often goes along a continuum from those “afraid of scaring” new employees or students, thereby underplaying the dangers, to those “playing cowboys” or emphasizing the need to be tough to “survive in the job”. This might depend on their own experiences as well as the media’s portrayal of incidents, and probably also how they themselves react and feel in different situations. People have different “violence-capital” and “violence-tolerance”, and therefore the same situation are interpreted differently. Some workplaces train their staff more than others, and the same with students, but our experience from more than 20 years as college-lecturers in social work education indicates students could benefit from being introduced to these topics earlier than most Norwegian bachelor programs do now. Therefore, we will introduce this over two weeks as part of a module on psychology, communication, ethics and social science during the first semester of our bachelor programs in child protection, social work and work & welfare. In cooperation with professionals from the field, they will get an introduction with research, examples and discussions on this topic. Their future workplaces will vary, but a vast majority will encounter clients struggling with drug-related, economic-, psychiatric-, crime- and social problems. Without stigmatizing or judging anyone based on those criteria, experience and research show the combination of experiencing problems, powerlessness and despair can cause otherwise well-behaved people to react differently, especially towards professionals whose job often balance between help and control. No course can prepare students for any occasion, nor should they go to work expecting the worst or mistrust of every client. Still, to a certain degree, they need to realize their professions are sometimes susceptible to violence either directly or latent in the form of receiving threats. To map students’ reflections on this topic and evaluate their reactions and learning outcomes they will answer a questionnaire pre- and post-module.

Research question for this presentation is “How do social-work students reflect upon their educational choice regarding work-related violence and personal risk?”

Keywords: Social work, college-education, violence, risk-management.