When a child is raped, abandoned or removed from a violent home in South Africa, a child protection social worker is assigned to the wellbeing of that child. They listen to the details, assess the danger, make urgent decisions. Once the child has been placed somewhere safe, the social worker moves on to the next case.
I am a social work researcher and educator, and have worked in the field of trauma for more than three decades. Protecting children has been at the centre of that work. Over time a question has kept surfacing: who protects the people doing the protecting?
