Not the heart stuff: early-career child protection social workers and preparation for difficult work
Faculty Advisor
Date
2025
Keywords
early-career child protection social workers, Canada, Interpretive Description study, social work curriculum
Abstract (summary)
Social work educators have been trying to understand how best to prepare social work students for the difficult aspects of social work practice for many years and there continues to be a need to improve social work education curriculum in relation to this issue. This article describes a study of Canadian early career child protection social workers, that is those who graduated from an accredited social work program less than two years ago, had less than two years of child protection practice experience, and were under the age of 30, and their perceptions of the challenges they have experienced in their practice along with their perceptions of how their social work education prepared them for these challenges. In this qualitative, Interpretive Description study, the intensity of the participants’ experiences are compared to the depth of their educational preparation. Recommendations regarding social work curriculum development are discussed. The findings emphasize the need to build in-depth curriculum that is more consistent with the experiences of early career social workers.
Publication Information
Hamilton, F., & Glanfield, F. (2025). Not the heart stuff: Early-career child protection social workers and preparation for difficult work. Journal of Social Work Education, 61(4), 579–594. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2025.2530747
Notes
Item Type
Article Post-Print
Language
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
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Embargoed Until:
2026-08-12