The sound of silence speaks loud: trauma-informed care to reconnect and support social workers in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Child Protection Social Workers in the high-trauma zones of South Africa’s Eastern Cape are not only witnesses to extreme violence but also silent bearers of the trauma they encounter. The country’s child protection system is marked by deeply entrenched violence, with sexual offenses against children and cases of abuse and neglect forming practitioners’ daily realities. Such exposure weakens social connectedness and impairs social workers’ capacity to engage empathetically with clients, a pattern increasingly recognized in child protection systems worldwide. This article investigated how secondary trauma and organizational dynamics shape the emotional health and connectedness of these practitioners. Using an exploratory descriptive design, Phase 1 involved semi-structured interviews with 16 Child Protection Social Workers, and Phase 2 piloted a Trauma-Informed Care program with 22 practitioners working with trauma-exposed populations, guided by Participatory Action Research principles to co-create trauma-sensitive strategies. The findings carry implications for both South Africa and the international child protection community. Trauma-informed care must be embedded not only within organizations but progressively across social work curricula, so that students enter the field with the language, reflective capacity, and relational grounding to sustain themselves. Supervision protects those already in practice; education prepares those who are coming. Naming this silence early helps prevent cumulative harm.