ABSTRACT
The concept of risk remains a key discourse in many nations in relation to child protection social work. Critical social work has a strong emphasis on emancipatory or anti-oppressive ideals that seek to promote justice: in the child protection domain this is particularly complex as parents and children’s rights and outcomes can diverge. Child protection is required to be dispassionate, clinical and risk-averse rather than engaged with the socio-economic struggles of impoverished families”. Early intervention programmes that focus on parenting skills and education may be similarly eclipsed by the real-world effects of persistent poverty and the difficulties of parenting within resource poor environments. Critical debates in child protection include interrogations of its knowledge base and the discourses embedded within them. Decision-making remains a key aspect of child protection social work and is fundamentally entwined with conceptions of risk. The shape of risk constructions in direct practice remains in considerable flux beneath the managerial and media contexts.
