The challenges for social work professionals in maintaining ethical Practice in a Risk society
Concepts of Risk and of the ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990, 1991) have had a major impact on the practice and management of social work in the UK. Risk assessment and risk management processes are increasing features of government concern, and for social work practice and management. There are a number of areas of concern that can be debated in relation to the value of risk assessment and risk management procedures. These include how effectively and fairly risks in social work assessments and interventions are assessed, how these relate to individual service users’ rights, and the "rights" of wider civil society to protection from an individual’s behaviour and actions.
This increased emphasis on quantifying, assessing, and managing identified risk, within a wider set of tensions arising for professional social work due to the rise of managerialism, poses challenges to traditional social work values, theories and methods.
This paper will examine the basis of the faith currently placed in risk assessment theories and methodology. It will also address the place of individual rights within such processes and how these relate to utilitarian principles in relation to the rights of others who live with or are part of clients’ communities. The predominance within United Kingdom social work agencies of managerialist and legalistically based decision-making, from which arise pressures for social workers’ employing agencies to protect themselves in increasingly legalistic, compensation-based systems, is considered.
Such issues arising from the risk society then have to be located within social work’s values base, a crucial element within the development and maintenance of social work practice. The paper will explore how such matters relate to application of the International Federation of Social Workers draft working definition of Social Work in practice.
Examples of how such issues might impact upon particular practice scenarios are given, in relation to work with children at risk of abuse, and mental health service users.