Making Sense of Risk: Social Work at the Boundary between Care and Control

Abstract

‘Risk’ has become a central concept for social work practice in countries with more developed social welfare systems. As argued by Hazel Kemshall and colleagues, ‘risk’ has often replaced ‘need’ as the main driver for social work interventions as societies seek to avoid harm to citizens. This shift of focus raises a tension between care (support for the individual or family in their own right) and control (seeking to prevent harm to themselves, each other or other citizens). This article considers some of the key developments in the 25 years since the above article, including the development of risk communication; the growing familiarity with both likelihood and severity concepts of risk; the assessment of risk as part of organisational arrangements to manage risk; and theoretical developments linking social work assessment, ‘working with risk’ and decision-making. In the first part of the article, we explore the care versus control boundary through focussing, in turn, on child and family social work, adult care services, mental health social work and criminal justice social work, and their respective developments. We then further extend two key foci regarding assessment and care planning as well as the use of professional knowledge at the care and control boundary. Our analysis of these developments points towards more nuanced approaches to managing risk and making decisions at these sometimes contentious boundaries.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• communication
• decision-making
• risk
• social care
• social work

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues in the Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group of the European Social Work Research Association for their inspiration and encouragement.

Authors contribution statement

Brian Taylor and Mary Baginsky led the writing of the section about assessment and care planning at the care and control boundary; Jim Campbell and Jane Shears led the writing of the section about mental health social work; Duncan Helm and Andrew Whittaker led the writing of the section about child and family social work; Campbell Killick led the writing of the section about adult care services; Paul McCafferty led the writing of the section about the use of professional knowledge at the care and control boundary; Judith Mullineux led the writing of the section about criminal justice social work; the development of the concept for the article and the integration of the above sections were led by Ravit Alfandari, Alessandro Sicora and Brian Taylor.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.