ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of some of the main approaches to understanding risk, and looks at the way it is constructed in policy and social work practice with older people. It focuses on the way in which risk management is framed, and looks at its emphasis on minimising the risks to which older people might be exposed. It has been widely noted in the social work and social policy literature that the increasing influence of neoliberalism in social welfare has led to a reorientation from 'need' to 'risk' as the basis for social support. The main debates about different approaches to risk relate to the ubiquitous dichotomy between objective or rational knowledge on the one hand and subjective or culturally bound knowledge on the other. While the concept of risk management might be interpreted in different ways, it has typically come to reflect a managerialist and technocratic approach to risk.
