Through the looking glass: children and the professionals who treat them

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the need for childcare professionals to reconsider their attitudes to child sexual abuse and to learn to handle their own personal problems with the subject. It is based in part on experience gained working with abused children in a locally funded project which was founded and run by incest survivors themselves.¹ The project arose from concern amongst community groups that the general response of psychiatrists, social workers, health care workers, etc. was not adequate to abused children’s needs, largely because of the ignorance and fear with which professionals were approaching children and their families. Even during the 1980s it was frequently denied in professional circles both that workers themselves had been abused as children and that a proportion of professionals were exploiting their access to children to perpetrate such abuse.² Consequently, clients or patients often found their own needs unanswered or their troubles intensified by professional prejudices and projections.