Constructing Moral Responses to
Risk: A Framework for Hopeful Social
Work Practice
Sonya N. Stanford*
Sonya Stanford, PhD is a Lecturer and the BSW Honours Coordinator in the School of
Sociology and Social Work at the University of Tasmania.
*Correspondence to Sonya Stanford, Ph.D., School of Sociology and Social Work, University
of Tasmania, Locked Bag 1340, Launceston, 7250, Tasmania, Australia.
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
The progressive politics of social work is threatened as social workers confront the
widening gulf between professional ideals and the realities of their practice within
the morally conservative context of neo-liberal risk society. Identifying how to subvert
the despondency and despair that such a climate evokes, and being able to connect
to an increased sense of professional agency, is urgently needed. This paper provides
insight into how this can be achieved by considering how social workers, who participated in an Australian study, determined a moral response that was ‘other’-focused
when faced with the dilemma of whether to respond to their clients’ or their own
sense of being ‘at risk’ within their respective practice contexts. The significance of
these findings is that they reinstate social workers as active and purposive, as opposed
to powerless and despondent, moral agents in the complex and fraught domains in
which they respond to the ubiquitous presence of risk. The article considers how this
framework can assist social workers in their day-to-day efforts to maintain their
professional focus and values.
Keywords: Risk, social work, neo-liberalism, morals and ethics
Accepted: February 2011
Introduction
Risk is understood to act as a repressive and regulatory mentality and ethos
of neo-liberal government that has undermined social work’s efforts to
# The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of
The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.
British Journal of Social Work (2011) 41, 1514–1531
doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcr030
Advance Access publication March 24, 2011
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progress civil society. A comprehensive critique of the politics of neoliberal governance of the social services sector identifies that risk has
replaced need as the focus of social and economic policies and, accordingly,
social control and regulation have overtaken former government commitments to, and practices of, social care (see, e.g. Webb, 2006; Green, 2007;
Kemshall, 2010). In this context, practitioners and social service users
keenly experience the personalisation of risk within this discourse as the
neo-liberal ethics of prudentialism, responsibilisation and accountability
(Rose, 2000; Kemshall, 2010) permeate policy, service delivery systems
and practices. At the same time, we are told that we are all vulnerable to
the high consequence risks endemic to the late-modern era (Beck, 2003,
2004; Giddens, 2003a, 2003b), which is said to have generated ‘a mood of
helplessness’ (Furedi, 2009, p. 652) amongst the general populace.
I suggest it is little wonder, then, that social workers report feeling
increasingly despondent and disillusioned within their work environments
in this context (Noble and Irwin, 2009). The negative ramifications of this
for the profession and clients have received international attention.
Research highlights the exodus of social workers from key practice contexts, particularly child protection (Tham, 2007; Hopkins et al., 2010) and
mental health (Evans et al., 2006). Simultaneously, recruiting staff to
these areas has also been identified as a pressing issue (Healy et al., 2009;
Russ et al., 2009) and considerable resources have been invested by governments and industry to avert further breakdowns in systems of response in
these vital domains. Furthermore, a general workforce shortage of social
workers has also been recognised. A recent national report by Healy and
Lonne (2010) notes that although employment in the Australian human services sector is expanding, social work’s presence within this workforce is in
decline. In 2010, Building a Safe and Confident Future: Implementing the
Recommendations of the Social Work Task Force (HM Government,
2010), which is a blueprint for reforming social work in England, was
released. Amongst its fifteen recommendations are ‘supply’ strategies ‘to
ensure that sufficient numbers of high quality social workers are being
recruited, educated and retained’ (HM Government, 2010, p. 7). I ask, is
it not curious that the migration of social workers from key fields of practice, and the profession generally, occurs at a time when social workers
report that they feel increasingly powerless to enact their professional
vision and values in a climate of increased proceduralisation, legalisation
and regulation (McDonald and Chenoweth, 2009)?
The pervasiveness of the conservative political and moral philosophy and
practices of neo-liberalism that have come to shape contemporary social
work within the risk society might easily be seen to have engendered a ‘politics of despair’ (Mullaly, 2001) within our profession. Supporting this claim,
Lymbery and Butler (2004) remark that ‘Practitioners are struggling to
survive (let alone thrive) as they experience externally imposed changes
to their work that move them away from their personal and professional
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values’ (Lymbery and Butler, 2004, p. 1). Kemshall (2010) cautions that
there is potential within this climate for social workers to give into ‘fatalism,
a sense they are trapped within risk-prone bureaucracies and technocratic
responses to risk’ (Kemshall, 2010, p. 1256). Despondency and despair,
though, are poison to hope. My concern has been that, as hope is eroded
and if our profession fatalistically accepts its relative powerlessness to
‘speak back’ to the prevailing conservative moral climate of neo-liberal
risk society, then we are ‘at risk’ of further marginalisation and regulation
as a profession. As the profession becomes increasingly distanced from its
capacity to enact its professional ‘mission’ and values, there is potential
for the ‘unspoken demand’ (Bauman, 1995) of the ‘Other’—welfare
clients—to be further exacerbated. In this context, then, identifying concrete examples that demonstrate social workers’ purposive enactment of
their profession’s ‘ethical will’ is an important research focus to support
hope and optimism.
I join with those writers who argue that, if a politic of action and an ethic
of care towards ‘Others’ are to act as defining features of social work within
this troubled clime, it is imperative that social workers are able to connect
with an active sense of moral agency in their efforts to secure ‘good’ outcomes for clients (Parton and O’Byrne, 2000; McBeath and Webb, 2002;
Banks, 2004, 2009; Webb, 2006), despite the ubiquitous presence of risk.
While models of, and research about, ethical decision making are commonly discussed and reported in social work literature, neo-liberal risk
society has largely been ignored as a key defining context for exploring
the ethical and moral agency of social workers (Broadhurst et al., 2010;
Kemshall, 2010). The consequence of this oversight has been the inscription
of a dominant ‘catastrophe narrative’ of risk in social work literature that
positions social workers as primarily disenfranchised, passive and/or victimised (Stanford, 2008, 2010). This viewpoint has three ramifications. First,
risk is positioned within the literature as a form of power and an object that
exists outside of social work and over which social workers have little control,
thereby exacerbating their sense of professional powerlessness. Second, the
moral implications of how concepts of risk are utilised by social workers in
their interventions, such as their consequences for clients, are de-emphasised.
And, third, how social workers actively resist the moral and political conservatism of risk is disregarded. This suggests a need for research that investigates how social workers are active agents, as opposed to passive subjects,
in negotiating or resisting the conservative morality of ‘risk orthodoxies’
(Kemshall, 2002) in contemporary practice contexts.
There is growing evidence of a counter-story to the dominant catastrophe
narrative of risk in social work. This is evident, for example, in studies
of how professionals resist the mentality, organisation and delivery of
welfare services within the context of the New Public Management
(see, e.g. Baines, 2008; Aronson and Smith, 2010; Rudes and Morrill, 2010).
Furthermore, the work of Koenig and Spano (2007) and Collins (2007)
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undermines the construction of social workers as necessarily vulnerable and
helpless within their practice environments. These authors emphasise practitioners’ resilience, hopefulness and optimism as staple resources that
support a strong sense of social workers’ professional identity. In other
work (Stanford, 2008, 2010), I have demonstrated that spaces do exist
within social workers’ everyday practice contexts that enable them to
resist invitations into the moral conservatism engendered by neo-liberal
risk society. This claim is also supported by the work of Beddoe (2010),
Broadhurst et al. (2010) and McDonald and Chenoweth (2009). The question that remains is ‘How can this be achieved’? This article offers an
answer to this question. I illustrate how twelve social workers, who comprised the majority of the sample of an Australian study, determined a
moral response that was ‘Other’-focused when faced with the dilemma of
whether to respond to their clients’ or their own sense of vulnerability
within their respective practice contexts. I identify a framework that can
assist social workers in their day-to-day, situated and localised practice contexts to enact their professional focus and commitments when compliance
or submission to the morally conservative impetus of risk is a recognised
issue in practice. Hence, these findings reinstate social workers as active
moral agents in the complex and fraught domains in which risk is present.
Implications of this for social work education and supervision are discussed.
Overview of methods
This article reports one aspect of findings from a larger study conducted in
Tasmania, Australia, that considered how ideas about risk are constituted
and integrated into social workers’ interventions. The value of this broad
focus for the research was that it enabled me to engage with the ubiquity
of risk and identify practices of its objectification across multiple practice
contexts. Consequently, participants for the study were sought from a
range of practice contexts and fields. In total, eighteen people participated
in the study. The sample was stratified according to years of work experience post qualification. Six practitioners had fewer than two years’ postqualifying work experience, six practitioners had been working between
two and four years, and six practitioners had five or more years’ experience.
Four females and two males compromised each sample category. Having
obtained ethical clearance from the University of Tasmania’s Social
Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee, two in-depth interviews
were conducted, with each practitioner producing a total of thirty-six
interviews.
Participants were asked to discuss an intervention that they had
implemented that was significant to them as a result of it having challenged
or troubled them in some way. Hence, the design of the interviews reflected
Fook’s (2002) critical reflective approach for generating practice theory.
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Each interview took, on average, two hours to complete, generating 1,213
pages of completed verbatim transcripts taken from audio tapes and
entered into Word documents. To disrupt the potential for social workers
to present ‘best practice’, considerable effort was taken to reassure participants that they would not be judged in the study and that every effort would
be taken to ensure their anonymity. Consequently, practitioners discussed
aspects of their practice that had concerned them, that they felt ashamed
of, that they thought were ethically ambiguous and evoked strong emotions
for them.
The analysis of the data considered how risk was ‘spoken into existence’
(Søndergaard, 2002) within the context of practitioners’ reflections about
their practice. It was clear from this analysis that risk operated as a
complex moral construct that posed specific risk-based dilemmas within
participants’ practice contexts. It was these dilemmas that marked their
interventions as ‘significant’ to them. Explanations of how risk operated
as a moral construct requiring a moral response from practitioners has
been discussed previously (Stanford, 2008, 2010). In this article, I present
results that indicate how these moral responses were constituted by practitioners. To begin with, I briefly review how risk was formative of the
ways practitioners spoke about clients, themselves and their practice dilemmas before proceeding to a detailed presentation and analysis of the reference points social workers used to resolve their risk-based dilemmas.
A detailed overview of the design and methods of the research are
discussed by Stanford (2008).
Risk–identity dilemmas in social work practice
Risk was spoken of in social workers’ practice narratives as an identifier of
people—practitioners spoke of themselves and their clients according to
them being ‘at risk’ and/or ‘a risk’. Hence, risk and identity were narrated
as being enmeshed, thereby generating ‘risk identities’ (Stanford, 2008,
2010). ‘At risk’ identities were constituted through the concept of vulnerability. Clients were spoken of as ‘at risk’ as a result of them having been
subjected to, or them facing, the threat of abuse and/or discrimination
from friends, family or professionals. Practitioners were spoken of as ‘at
risk’ when they feared being negatively judged by others (particularly colleagues, managers and other professionals), feared the threat of abuse
(from clients) and when they felt ethically compromised and/or were
stressed. Conversely, ‘a risk’ identities were constituted through the
concept of harm. Accordingly, clients were ascribed ‘a risk’ identities by
practitioners when they were considered to pose a danger to or a
problem for them. Social workers spoke of themselves as ‘a risk’ when
they feared that their practice responses to clients could be ineffective,
unethical or could cause unintended negative consequences for them.
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Eleven practitioners recognised both their clients’ vulnerability and their
capacity to do harm. Therefore, they were accorded both ‘at risk’ and ‘a
risk’ identities. Six practitioners also spoke about themselves in these
terms, thereby ascribing ‘at risk’ and ‘a risk’ identities to themselves. This
meant, then, that multiple client and practitioner risk identities were in
operation within the context of each practice story. For a small number
of social workers (n ¼ 3), risk identities were coupled in quite straightforward terms, such as ‘Client a risk’ and ‘Practitioner at risk’. However, for
the majority of practitioners (n ¼ 13), more complex configurations of
multiple risk identities were identified where clients could be both ‘at
risk’ and ‘a risk’ and practitioners could also be ‘at risk’ and ‘a risk’.
Notably, participants were preoccupied with the quandary they faced
about which of these identities they should respond to in their interventions:
their clients’ and/or their own ‘at risk’ and/or ‘a risk’ identities? Or, in other
words, social workers deliberated whether their interventions should be
focused towards advocating the position of the ‘Other’ as opposed to them
taking a defensive stance in their practice and protecting themselves. This
question constituted a moral dilemma for these social workers.
Constructing a moral response to risk–identity dilemmas
Social workers’ reflections of the veracity of their responses to the moral
dilemmas posed by risk identities reveal that their resolution comprised a
complex interplay of conscience, emotion and context. Social workers
adopted one of three primary standpoints in relation to these dilemmas:
to advocate for and protect clients (thereby emphasising clients’ ‘at risk’
identities); to control and dismiss clients (thereby emphasising clients’ ‘a
risk’ and practitioners’ ‘at risk’ identities); and being undecided about
how to resolve risk–identity conflicts. Of those who took a stance to advocate for and protect clients, seven practitioners did so without considering
the need to also advocate for and protect themselves, given that they,
too, felt vulnerable; their moral impulse was quite selflessly directed
towards a singular focus upon the ‘Other’.
Five primary reference points, singularly and in combination, were used
to justify the stance practitioners took, being: ethics, morals and values;
reconsidered meanings and qualities of risk; practitioners’ contexts; the
possibility of change for clients; and theoretical and practice frameworks.
The five reference points and their composite dimensions are presented
in Table 1. This table provides an overview of how many practitioners
within each practice standpoint, and in total, referred to the various dimensions of each reference point.
Given the focus of this paper, two questions need to be asked of these
data: first, what enabled the majority of practitioners to adopt a stance of
‘advocate for and protect clients’, given the tensions and conflict that
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existed between clients and their own ‘at risk’ and ‘a risk’ identities; and,
second, how come five practitioners were not able to do so? Answering
these questions requires further exploration of how each reference point
was utilised by practitioners. This exploration forms the basis of the following section of this article.
Ethics, morals and values
Table 1 illustrates that personal morals, ethics and values were referred to
by all practitioners who adopted a stance of ‘advocate for and protect’
clients and by those who were undecided about how to resolve their
risk–identity dilemmas. However, this reference point was not a feature
of the reflections of practitioners who spoke of ‘controlling and dismissing’
their clients who thereby responded to their clients’ ‘a risk’ identities, which
served to reinforce their own ‘at risk’ identities. This is an important point
of difference in the moral reckoning used by practitioners within each
standpoint.
Personal belief systems mostly created surety for practitioners about how
to respond to the tensions between their clients’ and their own risk identities. As one practitioner noted:
Table 1 Numbers of practitioners who referred to each reference point to resolve their risk–identity
dilemmas
Reference points
Total Practitioners’ standpoints
Advocate for
and protect
client
Control and
dismiss
client Undecided
n ¼ 17 n ¼ 12 n ¼ 2 n ¼ 3
Ethics, morals and
values
Personal morals,
ethics and values
15 12 0 3
Professional ethics
and values
15 10 2 3
Reconsidered the
meanings and
qualities of risk
The reality of risk 11 9 0 2
The degree of risk 10 10 0 0
Practitioners’ contexts Organisational
contexts
12 8 2 2
Personal contexts 7 4 2 1
Possibility of change
for clients
Possibility of change 7 7 0 0
Impossibility of
change
2 0 1 1
Theoretical and
practice frameworks
Theoretical and
practice
frameworks
8 7 1 0
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. . . there was, I realised in hindsight, it was not from my social work perspective that I made that decision. It was my own sense of that I believed would
be most useful for that young person . . . it was quite clear and it feels quite
clear to me what I needed to do—where I come from.
These practitioners also expressed strong sentiments of compassion for and
empathy with their clients. For example, a practitioner, talking about her
work with a child, said:
So I think there was a part of me was saying ‘no, you are in a professional
role here’, whereas there was, in fact, a gorgeous kid and I loved him and
it is like, it is OK to say that.
Compassion and empathy, however, were notably absent sentiments within
the practice narratives of participants who spoke of ‘controlling and dismissing’ their clients.
While feelings of compassion and empathy for clients enabled many practitioners to clarify their moral position in their interventions, it seemed to
accentuate the moral dilemmas faced by three practitioners whose clients
had been identified as ‘at risk’ and ‘a risk’. These practitioners could
appreciate the hardships faced by their clients and felt quite deeply about
their circumstances; however, they were also conflicted about how they
should morally align themselves with them, given their clients had done
something wrong. Thus, personal morals, ethics and values alone were
not able to provide these practitioners with a resolution to the moral dilemmas of their practice.
Regard for the encoded aspects of social work ethics and values also resonated strongly as a grounding influence for practitioners who adopted a
stance of ‘advocate for and protect clients’. As one practitioner noted:
I was thinking if I took a stand on this, before I took the stand, I thought I’m
really putting myself on the line here, but then I decided to take a stand and
advocated for him . . . we’re taking a stand when we’re advocating for
someone against oppression . . . . It’s the nature of a lot of our work in
social work.
However, it seems that, in the absence of a compassionate and empathetic
engagement with his young client, professional ethics were used as a justification by one practitioner to argue against his greater involvement in the
client’s situation. When considering whether he should have done more for
the client, this practitioner commented:
I think, at the end of the day, morally and ethically I would have done the
right thing and I feel very settled and secure in that because I used client
self-determination. I can say, ‘You still provided a certain amount but it
has been up to the family and up to the young person to take that and do
what they want with it’.
Practitioners who noted that they had a heartfelt commitment to their
clients and their ‘cause’ highlighted that they felt professionally responsible
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and that they had an obligation to respond to their suffering. In contrast,
social workers who were undecided about how to resolve their risk–identity
dilemmas emphasised that they felt burdened by their professional responsibilities and obligations to clients and others. This point is poignantly illustrated by a practitioner who was working with a person convicted of sex
offences, who said:
. . . they [colleagues] treat this person like the enemy, which I can understand and accept that he is . . . but it almost turns into—you almost
become his protector, or that is how I feel. . . . but this fellow—the harm
he apparently has done and has the potential to do is very scary and you
almost take on that responsibility because I haven’t got a clue what to do
with him . . . I feel responsible if he re-offended.
While professional ethics and values supported the view that the practitioner ‘should give this person a chance, even if it meant stuffing it up’,
this reference point did not alleviate her lingering doubt about which
client and practitioner risk identities should be the focus of her
interventions.
Reconsidered the meaning and qualities of risk
Eleven practitioners reconsidered the contexts within which risk identities had been ascribed as they contemplated their risk–identity dilemmas.
At some point, these social workers asked themselves ‘How real is the
risk we face or pose?’. Questioning the reality of risk served to destabilise initially ascribed client and practitioner risk identities and, therefore,
enabled practitioners to reconsider their initial ideas about clients and
themselves. For some practitioners, posing this question served to
reinforce their views of the realities of risk for their ‘at risk’ clients.
For others, it enabled them to refocus on their clients’ ‘at risk’, as
opposed to their ‘a risk’, identities. However, questioning the ‘reality of
risk’ did not help those practitioners who were undecided about their
stance in relation to their clients’ and their own risk identities. These
identities, therefore, remained enigmatic to them. Reconsidering the
reality of risk was not considered by practitioners who resolved to
‘control and dismiss’ their clients.
Those social workers who faced the dilemma of whether to respond to
their clients’ or their own ‘at risk’ identities also considered the degree of
risk they and their clients faced. That is, social workers conducted a comparative assessment of who was at greater risk in their practice situations—clients or themselves. This comparative analysis was not
considered by practitioners who resolved to ‘control and dismiss’ their
clients or who were undecided about their practice stance. Not surprisingly,
those practitioners who spoke of ‘advocating for and protecting’ their
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clients determined that their clients’ level of risk was greater or more
extreme than their own. For example, one practitioner reasoned:
In balance there was a young person’s life and well-being at stake. I am
older and I have a degree and I have a job, a partner. I have a house,
money, all those things and in balance she had none of those, least of all
experience, confidence, any of that, and this to me was very minimal in comparison to where it was for her.
Reconsidering the degree of risk faced by clients and social workers thus
reflected a rational and pragmatic response by practitioners to the moral
dilemmas incumbent to risk–identity conflicts.
Practitioners’ contexts
Informal and formal aspects of social workers’ organisational contexts
were important for twelve practitioners across all three standpoints.
Interestingly, both practitioners who took the stance of ‘control and
dismiss the client’ cited their organisational contexts as a key determinant
for them adopting this stance. Also of note is that two practitioners who
were ‘undecided’ similarly said their organisational contexts exacerbated
their feelings of being ‘at risk’ and also identified that it limited their
capacity to respond to their clients’ ‘at risk’ identities. Feeling ‘at risk’
within their organisations meant feeling isolated and fearing the imposition of formal and informal sanctions if they acted contrary to organisational policies and cultures. For example, a practitioner said that there
was an informal culture within her organisation to ‘not ask for help’
and this amplified the sense of risk she felt when she did not want to
work with a client due to a conflict of interest. Other practitioners said
that their organisational contexts mediated their sense of being at risk,
which enabled them to focus upon their clients’, as opposed to their
own, ‘at risk’ identity. Being able to ‘advocate for and protect clients’
was thus facilitated by organisational support for a small number of practitioners. In the face of a less supportive organisational environment,
however, other social workers had to ‘go it alone’ as they determined a
moral response to their risk–identity dilemmas.
The personal contexts of practitioners were less of a concern to those
social workers who ‘advocated for and protected clients’ compared to
social workers who ‘controlled and dismissed clients’. However, the seven
practitioners who mentioned significant personal contexts all indicated
that it contributed to their feelings of being ‘at risk’ in their practice. The
personal contexts that were most relevant to them were their status as
new graduates and their sexualities. In the case of the former, a common
theme emerged of social workers feeling ‘at risk’ themselves, as well as ‘a
risk’ to clients, because of their new graduate status. In the case of the
latter issue, the ‘non-hetero’ sexualities of practitioners was significant in
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terms of how they engaged with their ‘non-hetero’ clients’ and their own ‘at
risk’ identities.
Belief in the possibility of change for clients
The possibility of change for clients identified as ‘at risk’ and/or ‘a risk’ was
considered by seven of the twelve social workers who resolved to ‘advocate
for and protect’ their clients. In keeping with their positive feelings towards
their clients, these practitioners expressed a belief that change was possible
for them. For each of these social workers, then, their moral commitment to
attend to their clients’ ‘at risk’ identities was embedded in stories of hope.
As one practitioner commented:
It was lots of hard work . . . this [client] has, I know, so much beauty inside
her and a different kind of strength that can be found that I had worked
really hard to locate and get in touch with, without any amazing stories of
success, but that I just insisted on believing in.
The possibility of change was not considered by social workers who
adopted alternative moral standpoints. However, the impossibility of
change was explicitly considered by two practitioners and this belief
served to emphasise their clients’ ‘a risk’, as opposed to their ‘at risk’,
identities.
Theoretical and practice frameworks
Theoretical and practice frameworks provided a philosophical justification for the stance practitioners adopted in relation to their risk–identity
dilemmas. These frameworks comprised the integration of formal theoretical and substantive knowledge as well as models of practice that
guided social workers’ orientation towards their practice. The theoretical
perspectives discussed by practitioners who ‘advocated for and protected’
their clients (such as critical theories) directed their attention towards
social theories of oppression and social injustice. Thus, each of these
practitioners attended to their clients’ ‘at risk’ identities. Narrative and
strength-based models of practice were commonly referred to by these
practitioners.
Theoretical frameworks were not considered by practitioners who
adopted other standpoints. However, one practitioner who had ‘controlled
and dismissed’ his client mentioned that he used a ‘results focused’ practice
model that involved him carefully planning interventions that ‘got results’ to
‘fix’ people. His client, whom he had worked with for a considerable period
of time, had not changed. This enhanced his view that the client was ‘a risk’,
which served to exacerbate his feelings of stress and frustration (the source
of his ‘at risk’ practitioner identity). Practice frameworks were also not
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considered by social workers who were undecided about the moral dilemmas of their risk–identity conflicts.
Discussion
Writers who critique the individualising morality of neo-liberal risk society
emphasise that former commitments to need in social policy have been
thwarted by the more urgent demand to secure safety in the face of universalised threats (Culpitt, 1999; Rose, 2000; Webb, 2006). Hence, self-interest,
fuelled by anxiety and an increased sense of personal vulnerability to risks
(Beck, 2003, 2004; Giddens, 2003a, 2003b; Furedi, 2009) is said to have
usurped our care and concern to respond generously and meaningfully to
the ‘unspoken demand’ (Bauman, 1995) of ‘Others’. This being the case,
the surprise of the data in this study is the higher proportion of practitioners
that determined to be ‘Other’ rather than purely self-focused in their
responses to their risk–identity dilemmas. Furthermore, as risk is discussed
within critically oriented social work literature, it could have been assumed
that each of the practitioners who participated in this study would
have spoken a fatalistic narrative in their reflections about their
interventions—that there was little point in their trying to escape from
the pervasive and subjugating morality of neo-liberal risk society.
Practitioners did not present themselves as duplicitous subjects of this
conservative force, however; nor did they speak of themselves as compliant
co-conspirators of the regulatory regimes of their organisations. Instead,
they inscribed themselves as active moral agents within their reflective
accounts as they wrestled with their risk–identity dilemmas.
Risk was understood as a personal moral issue for these social workers.
Risk operated as a personal construct for them in two important respects:
first, through the enmeshment of risk with clients’ and their own identities;
and, second, in terms of practitioners’ personal (as opposed to organisational) resolution of their risk-based moral dilemmas. The personalisation
of risk, then, required social workers to actively construct localised and situated responses to the moral dilemmas associated with clients’ and their own
risk identities. Hence, the results of this study illustrate that social workers
constructed and utilised informal logics (Broadhurst et al., 2010) and subjective rationalities (Kemshall, 2010) of risk. According to Broadhurst et al.
(2010), the ‘informal logics of risk that are so central to professional practice
are under-emphasised and under-theorised’ (Broadhurst et al., 2010,
p. 1051) in literature. This study, therefore, makes an important contribution to providing empirical evidence that identifies how social workers
construct moral responses to risk dilemmas in the everyday, embedded contexts of their practice.
The results of this study demonstrate that an alternative framework to
the guarded morality of neo-liberal risk society was instrumental in
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supporting the majority of practitioners’ concern for advocating for and
protecting ‘Others’. This occurred even though there was an explicit
acknowledgement that the pervasive influence of risk had encroached
upon the personal territories of their identity and safety. The findings of
this research indicate that those social workers who advocated for and protected their clients, and maintained a focus on clients, as opposed to their
own ‘at risk’ identities:

Those people who remained undecided about how to resolve their
risk–identity dilemmas struggled arduously to ascertain their moral resolution, yet were unable to do so. I have noted elsewhere how feelings of
fear were particularly prominent for this group of practitioners (Stanford, 2010). Their stories are a sobering reminder that due recognition
needs to be given to how the emotion of risk—fear—can interrupt
even the most determined efforts towards progressive action, which clarifies the need for responsive organisational systems to support and guide
practitioners during these difficult times. However, it is also worth noting
that these practitioners did not consider the full range of reference
points compared to those social workers who remained ‘Other’-focused
in their interventions. Practitioners who were undecided about their
stance:

workers can ameliorate the ‘worst excesses’ of neo-liberalisms’ ethics of
risk. This study, therefore, offers valuable insight into a framework that
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supports a situated rationality of risk that is ‘Other’-focused and in keeping
with the ethical will of the social work profession. This outcome of the
research raises important implications for social work education and supervision and these will now be discussed.
First, there is a need to develop organisational contexts and supervision
practices that support workers to do ‘good’ practice (in the practical and
moral sense). The study reported here indicates that there is a clear need
to lessen social workers’ fears of reprisal within their organisations
(Webb, 2006; Kemshall, 2010). Social workers’ ‘at risk’ identities were in
the main constituted through these fears. Supportive work environments
(that valued and provided professional supervision, offered debriefing
and encouraged creative practice) helped to mediate the sense of risk
that some practitioners felt. Their risk-based dilemmas may not have
been so acute or apparent if social workers were able to identify stronger
systems of support for themselves and ‘safe’ spaces for reflection within
their organisations.
Supervision has the potential to be a ‘safe’ space for social workers to
explore the ethical and moral dilemmas associated with risk. Beddoe
(2010) cautions, however, that supervision can act as another ‘technology
of surveillance’ (Beddoe, 2010, p. 1284) of professional practice within the
context of the risk society. Beddoe (2010) argues that, for supervision to
maintain ‘its integrity as a learning-focused activity’ (Beddoe, 2010,
p. 1280) rather than a risk-management activity, it must: be focused upon
exploring emotions; facilitate critical inquiry of practice and issues;
support practitioners’ self-confidence when faced with uncertainty and in
the face of conflicting or competing demands; and enable trust to develop
in the supervision relationship. Exploring models of supervision that could
mitigate the exacerbation of social workers’ ‘at risk’ identities and that
support practice that is ‘Other’-focused is a topic that warrants future
research.
Second, due recognition must be given to how risk operates as a moral
construct in social work practice. Risk is operationalised within actuarial
models as a calculable object (Webb, 2006): ethical and moral concerns
are ‘screened out’ of risk equations. The findings of the study reported in
this article clarify that decisions about risk are ethical and moral issues,
however. Accordingly, it seems important that social workers are provided
with opportunities in their workplaces to critically examine the operations
of ethics, morals and values within their ‘risk stories’ about their
interventions.
Third, there is a need to develop social workers who can be ‘strong evaluators’ in the face of the self-interested ethics of neo-liberal risk society.
Several writers argue the need to support students’ and practitioners’
aspirations towards being a particular kind of moral person whose virtues
enable them to make ‘good’ decisions because they are ‘good’ people
(McBeath and Webb, 2002; Banks, 2004, 2009; Clark, 2006). On the basis
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of the results reported in this paper, compassion and empathy would be a
key focus for this identity work, given that compassion and empathy
acted as the emotive moral impetus for social workers to attend to their
clients’ ‘at risk’ identities.
Fourth, the contingency of risk needs to be acknowledged to enable it
to be conceptualised as a revisable construct. We need to question the
assumptions, feelings and motivations that contribute to the meanings
and qualities we ascribe to our embodied conceptualisations of risk.
This means questioning our initial assessments—formal and informal—
over time, not because they are necessarily wrong, but because, by
doing so, the story we narrate about clients, ourselves and our practice
becomes more substantial and contextual. Utilising critically reflective
processes and questions would be a means of achieving this in professional supervision sessions.
Fifth, the results of this study indicate that belief in the possibility of
change for clients enables social workers to see beyond the persistent and
troubling presence of risk in people’s lives. Practitioners who adopted a
stance of being for the ‘Other’ characteristically spoke of their clients’
strengths, resourcefulness and capacities. These statements coalesced
around statements of care, hope and change. Practitioners can be recognised in these statements as optimistic and committed to practices that
were ethical and moral. This indicates the value of incorporating strengthsbased models of practice in teaching and to identify ways to encourage
strengths-based identities for clients and practitioners (Collins, 2007;
Koenig and Spano, 2007). These identities offer a direct connection to
embodied aspects of hope and, as this study has demonstrated, ascribed
identities are powerful constituents of social workers’ interventions. A
focus on hope in social work practice would seem a necessary antidote to
the despair and despondency that is said to plague our profession
(Mullaly, 2001). Supervision is a site in which this orienting framework
could be explored and supported.
Finally, although it was not as commonly spoken of as other reference
points, theoretical frameworks of social oppression and injustice provided a solid grounding for practitioners who resolved to respond to
their clients’ ‘at risk’ identities. This has implications for both social
work education and supervision. Although teaching frameworks for practice is a core component of many qualifying social work programmes,
contextualising risk as a fundamental basis for engaging with practice
paradigms is a less obvious pedagogical strategy. This needs to change,
particularly in view of the consistent theme in social work literature
that mentalities of risk have colonised the social services sector.
Hence, there is a role for educators and supervisors to support social
work students and practitioners to theorise risk within their practice
environments.
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Conclusion
The critical social work risk literature is characterised by a ‘catastrophe’
narrative in which social workers are presented as despondent and despairing. However, while risk–identity dilemmas were a source of despair for
practitioners in this study, and a lingering one for a minority, despondency
was not their response. Social workers were committed to constructing a
moral response to the moral dilemmas of their practice, even as they
faced the paucity of external resources to support them in these endeavours.
This is an important finding. It confronts the characterisation of social
workers’ passivity in the face of the political and moral conservatism of neoliberal risk society. Social workers spoke of being able to enact their moral
agency within the context of their encounters with clients. The implication
of this is profound. It means that, while neo-liberal risk society might be a
defining context for contemporary practice, its effects are not necessarily
total—there are spaces in which social workers can enact their influence.
This is a valuable source of empowerment for practitioners who confront
the widening gulf within the context of neo-liberal risk society between
the ideals of their ‘mission’ in social work and the ‘realities’ of their contexts
(Lymbery and Butler, 2004; McDonald and Chenoweth, 2009). As educators and managers, we can use this knowledge to inspire our students and
colleagues towards inspired, creative and contextually sensitive practice
to facilitate opportunities for demonstrations of care and responsiveness
to need. It has the potential to be a source of hope and power in social
work practice.
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