Violence is social workers’ professional hazard

In re W (children) (Care proceedings: witness anonymity) (CA TLR 1 November)

A judge who permitted a witness, a social worker formerly engaged in care proceedings, to give evidence anonymously behind a screen was plainly wrong to take the course he had taken. The social worker’s evidence went to the question of whether the mother had in fact severed her connections with the violent and dangerous father and might therefore be unsuitable for the children’s primary carer. Social workers were regularly subjected to threats of violence, and sometimes actual violence, from adults who faced permanent separation from their children, and social workers generally had to regard that as a professional hazard. Anonymity would be afforded to a professional social worker witness in care proceedings only in highly exceptional cases.