ABSTRACT
This chapter takes further the notion of risk and social work. In it, Stephen Webb, prominent social theorist and researcher in social work, social welfare and policy, invites us to understand social work and its relationship to risk through the lenses of ‘risk society’, neoliberalism and late modernity. Our chosen extract is from the introduction to his book, in which he sets the parameters for the discussion that follows. In summary, he offers a way through technical-managerialist responses to risk, culminating in an alternative vision and method for social work based on ethics and ‘the practice of value’.
