Supporting Safe Practice: Preventing Professional Dangerousness

Join us in Davis this June for a full-day workshop taught by internationally renowned author and social work educator Nicki Weld!

About the Course

Child fatality reviews continue to show us that while families engage in dangerous dynamics that lead to harm, so, unfortunately, can the professionals and agencies working with them. Inadvertently contributing to a poor outcome for a child, young person or family member can have a devastating effect on workers and often leads to resignation from the profession. Drawing on a range of research, this workshop provides an in-depth look at the concept of professional dangerousness in relation to child and family work, and explores individual and organization dangerous dynamics that can occur. It examines the interactional patterns that can contribute to professional dangerousness and offers strategies to prevent it from an individual and agency perspective.

After attending this training, participants will be able to:

• Identify interactional patterns between families, workers and agencies
• Describe the concept of professional dangerousness
• Name individual dangerous dynamics
• Describe the concept of hostage theory
• Describe the professional accommodation syndrome
• Identify agency and inter-agency professional dangerousness dynamics
• Identify individual and agency strategies to prevent professional dangerousness

About the Presenter

Nicki Weld, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland and the director of CNZN Ltd., New Zealand. Over the past 30 years, Weld, a native of Aotearoa (Maori New Zealand), has worked in a variety of human services and child protection roles, including as a professional leader for social work in general health, a senior social worker, a supervisor, a senior child protection trainer and a national social work advisor within the New Zealand government and non-government sectors. Weld is the author of several human services books and the primary creator of the internationally applied Three Houses tool.