The crossover between systemic psychotherapy and social work has received renewed attention in recent years. Expanding numbers of local authorities are commissioning systemic training and encouraging social workers to apply these ideas within the field of child protection. It is therefore vital and timely to listen to social workers’ experiences, in order to attain feedback on how this can best be achieved. This research study interviewed five case‐holding social workers in a London local authority child protection team about their experiences, and used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to analyse the data. This paper discusses two themes: ‘the importance of the organisation’ and ‘the process of applying learning’. Recommendations for improvements are made for academic and employment organisations from the research findings. The overall argument is that there is a significant opportunity for the field of systemic psychotherapy to learn from and improve the social work field, and vice versa.