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may be time
to get out! Your safety
as a fieldworker depends upon constant attention to your surroundings and
realistic appraisal of the circumstances in which you find yourself. By
carefully observing the client and your surroundings, you can deny the client
access to things that could possibly be used as a weapon against you. By
using basic safety techniques, you can reduce your vulnerability and make
yourself a difficult target. The single
most important thing that you must watch in the presence of clients is their
hands. WATCH THE HANDS.
Almost every weapon ever made was designed to be hand operated. The hands
hold the weapons, and often the weapons can be the hands themselves. Try to
keep the client's hands in sight, especially the area of his palms. Look around clients to see what is within
their reach. Constantly be looking for things that could be used as a weapon.
When weapons are used in assaults against workers, the chosen object was what
happened to be at hand, not a weapon that the client had brought into the
area with the deliberate intent of being used in an assault. Safety is a
matter of on going assessment of your surroundings and making timely
decisions based on that assessment. Safety is a matter of constantly
reviewing your actions to learn from your mistakes. The first step toward
greater personal safety in the field is knowing where to draw the line.
Violent behavior on the part of the client may be understandable, but it is
never acceptable. |
New Safety Book 2
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Email:
webmaster@officersofavalon.com |
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To contact us: |
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About the Authors: Charles Ennis
and Janet Douglas have almost 50 years of combined law enforcement and social
work experience. They have worked
together for more than 10 years together investigating high risk child abuse
complaints where there were concerns about the potential for violence. During his career Ennis was a member of the
Emergency Response Team Tactical Unit and the Gang Crime Unit for the Vancouver
Police Department. Douglas has been a
frontline child protection social worker in Vancouver, BC, for the past 21
years, working with families in crisis.
The authors have trained numerous agencies and their staff on how to
be safe when working in the field.
They are authors of a new book on this subject, The Safe Approach:
Controlling Risk for Workers in the Helping Professions
(Idyll Arbor Publishing). |
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Volume
2 no. 5 Mabon/Alban Elved/Mean
Foghamar/Winter Finding 2007 |