Editorial to risk and social work: critical perspectives

We are very pleased to introduce this special issue of the British Journal of Social Work on risk and social work. The issue distils what is known about risk in the context of social work, and critically explores and elaborates on some of the major themes that have emerged and are emergent as ‘risk’ has come to occupy centre stage in our field.

Interest in the concept of risk in the context of social work research, theory, education and practice has grown rapidly over the past ten to fifteen years, encompassing an increasingly wide range of questions and areas of enquiry. These have included, at the micro level, empirical work on the processes of risk assessment with specific service user groups, at the meso level organisational and cross-organisational strategies for risk management, and at the macro level theoretical analysis of social work in a risk society. Cross-cutting these have been concerns with balancing risks with rights or with needs, counterposing risk to services users with risk to professionals and professions, and debates about how risk itself should be defined, let alone the definition operationalised.

Attention to the concept of risk in social work mirrors similar and growing engagement with risk in cognate social sciences. Likewise, concerns with risk extend to wider disciplinary and professional arenas, such as medicine and engineering, and at multiple policy levels reaching as far as the Cabinet Office (Cabinet Office Strategy Unit, 2002). As Power (2004) observes, ‘Risk management and risk “talk” are all around us’ (p. 9). The picture internationally confirms that preoccupation with risk is not just a ‘British disease’. Recent work from Australia, for example, highlights that ‘Risk assessment and risk management have emerged as central organising principles for an increasing number of health and welfare programs’ (Green, 2007).