Although social work functions in juvenile justice will vary among jurisdictions, common functions include intake screening and preadjudication services, psychological assessment, court-mandated investigations, courtroom testimony, probation supervision, and court-assigned social services. Some role strains are derived from role inconsistency, training incongruity, and interprofessional status tensions. The social worker in juvenile justice as in other areas of the criminal justice system is often frustrated by the conflict between control and treatment functions. The social worker commonly perceives that the legal system imposes control functions on worker-client interaction which hinders the treatment goals to which the worker has committed himself/herself. Further, much of the work done by juvenile-court social workers does not match their training; e.g., most social workers are taught the value of continuity and progressive development of the client through casework, but the court system imposes an elaborate division of labor with episodic client contact and mandated cutoff dates for intervention. Social workers also encounter interprofessional status tensions with other criminal justice professionals who view their work and background as being more directly related to priority functions in the criminal justice system. Some of these problems can be eased through training related to social workers' actual juvenile-court functions, better networking, community analysis, educating other juvenile justice professionals about the value of the social worker's role, and recruitment of more social workers. Thirty-eight references are provided.