ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses risk, using examples from social work relating to child welfare. It considers how social work students are prepared through their training to deal with risk, reflecting in particular on the courses and students work with. The chapter draws the two aspects together to make some tentative conclusions about how social work students are and might be, prepared to meet risk in their working lives as social workers. It discusses the confusing and somewhat contradictory picture facing would be social work students when they consider risk in relation to social work. Reflecting on Douglas's analysis of our culture as one that emphasises, individualises and technicises risk, our social work student may, rightly, expect to be faced with an array of apparently technical risk assessment and management checklists. The chapter argues that this is profoundly political and represents a discourse which does not problematise family relations but instead focuses blame on organisations and workers.
