Violence against social work staff

For the past five years Community Care has tracked the violence and abuse faced by social workers and social care staff in their work.

Each year the findings of our survey of social services staff and data gathering from councils reveal shocking insights into the scale and nature of the dangers those working in social care face when trying to help others, and this year is no exception.

Here we reveal the findings of our biggest-ever survey of social workers and social care staff about the work-related violence they face and the scale of the problem as recorded by local authorities across the country from Freedom of Information requests made to 131 councils.

How violent is your area?

Find out how many incidents of violence and abuse against social care staff were recorded in your area using our interactive map.

As well as checking the figures for 2012/13 you can also scroll through the past five years' worth of data to see how the level of violence has changed at local level since 2009/10.

The data was gathered from Freedom of Information requests made by Community Care. This year 131 councils in England, Scotland and Wales provided data.

Data for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was not collected in 2009/10 and 2010/11.