My research will be based on case files over a 120 year period, exploring change and continuity in social work responses to male violence, attribution of agency in and responsibility for protecting children and the influence of first and second wave feminism. I want to reflect on social work encounters as gendered spaces in which female workers traditionally laid claim to expertise on the basis of maternalism and in which working class women continue to work a ‘third shift’, managing the risks and opportunities of child protection interventions. What can contemporary social workers learn from the history of their profession? How can history become a resource in work with women who have social workers involved in their lives?