Nobody tells you at the interview that a regular part of the job is standing on a doormat while somebody tells you what they think of you.
It took me years to stop taking it home. I am still not completely there. These are the things that helped.
It is mostly not about you
You are the letter that came. You are the last worker, who promised and did not ring. You are the school, the housing office, the benefits line that kept them on hold for fifty minutes. You are their own mother, sometimes, and whoever came to their door when they were nine.
You have knocked at the end of a very long queue and you are the first one they can see.
That does not make it pleasant. It does explain it, and I have found I can stand in front of something I understand for a good deal longer.
Some of it is about you
And you should listen for that part.
Under the shouting there is often a true sentence. “You lot never tell me anything.” “You said you’d come Tuesday.” “You wrote that I was aggressive and I was crying.”
If it is true, say so. “You’re right. I should have rung.” I have watched a whole doorstep change on those six words. People who are used to being managed are not used to being agreed with.
What to do with your face
Keep it soft and keep it still. Do not smile, which looks like you are not taking it seriously. Do not frown, which looks like you are writing it down in your head.
Keep your voice lower than theirs and slower than theirs. Do not say “calm down”. Nobody in the history of the world has calmed down because they were told to.
Say their name. Say, “I can hear how angry you are.” Then stop talking, which is the hard part.
Where the line is
There is a line, and you do not have to stand on the wrong side of it to prove you are good at your job.
Angry is allowed, and so is loud. Swearing at the situation is not the same as a threat, and it is worth learning to hear the difference.
Threats are over it. So is being followed to your car, and so is anything about your family or where you live. If any of that happens, you leave, and you tell your manager before you have taken your coat off, and it goes on the record. You are not making a fuss. The next worker needs to know before she knocks.
Go in pairs when your stomach tells you to. Your stomach has read more risk assessments than you have.
Afterwards
Your hands may shake. That is adrenaline and it will pass in about twenty minutes. Do not drive until it has.
Write down what was said while you remember it, including the true sentence, including what you said back.
Then tell somebody. Not the whole office. One person, who will say “that sounds horrible” and not “what did you do to set them off?”
The part I did not expect
Some of the people who shouted at me longest are the ones I ended up working with best.
I think it is because they had shown me the worst of it on the first day and I had come back on the second. After that there was not much left to be frightened of, on either side.
I would not recommend it as a way of starting. But when I hear a new worker say that a mum “kicked off” and they are dreading the next visit, I tell them to go anyway, and to start with “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
You will need to have been. They can tell, and it is a long visit if you are bluffing.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: How to keep a newly qualified social worker