Violence to social workers

Abstract

Social workers have never had the positive public image that some other professions enjoy. For example, when 25-year-old Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was murdered while carrying out police duty in April 1984, the media quite rightly brought the matter to the immediate attention of the public. Few people could have missed the newspaper headlines or television's graphic account of the incident. However, when Norma Morris became the second social worker to be murdered within a matter of a few months, one of her former colleagues expressed views that were strongly held by many others in the profession: Had the social worker, Norma Morris, been a police woman I suspect that the national papers would have told the nation of this tragedy. Had Ms. Morris been accused of neglecting a client, it might well have been broadcast nationally.