Assessing and managing risk with people with physical disabilities: the development of a safety checklist

Abstract

Assessing risk with adults with physical disabilities who receive social care services is a task at the confluence of three perspectives on risk: the rights and choices of clients, the role and task of the social worker and the responsibilities of the service provider organisation in managing risk. The purpose of this article is to articulate and contextualise some of these issues of risk and risk-taking when people receive social care services. The tensions between client concerns and organisational risk management perspectives are illustrated by drawing on a project to engage clients in jointly assessing their risks with social workers, undertaken with teams in the Physical Health and Disability Programme of Care in a Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland in 2010. In this article, we show how a risk discourse can be a useful aspect of the dealings between social workers and clients, whilst locating this within the risk regulation framework for managing risk within which health and social care services operate. We argue that incorporating both client perceptions of risk-taking and organisational risk management provides a balanced approach more likely to be effective than championing one at the expense of the other.

Keywords:

• assessing risk
• assessment tool development
• communicating risk
• managing risk
• Northern Ireland
• physical disability
• social work
• social care governance

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the contribution of clients, social workers and managers in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust for their participation in and support for this project, in particular Mrs Geraldine Fleming, at that time Assistant Director of Health and Physical Disability Services.