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Redefining community care social work: needs or risks led?
1Department of Social Policy and Social Work, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK.
Health & Social Care in the Community
|September 19, 2001
Summary
Community care social work may be shifting from addressing needs to managing risks. This focus on risk containment can limit empowering service users to define their own positive risks.
Area of Science:
- Social Work
- Public Health
- Risk Management
Background:
- Community care social work traditionally focused on responding to client needs.
- Recent developments in health and welfare services emphasize risk management, particularly in elder abuse and mental health.
- The concept of risk has been less explicitly addressed in community care literature.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the shift in community care social work from needs-based response to risk-based management.
- To explore how risk management influences resource allocation in community care.
- To examine the impact of risk-averse approaches on service user empowerment.
Main Methods:
- Reflective analysis of community care literature.
- Examination of the role of risk in current community care practices.
- Conceptual analysis of risk management in social work.
Main Results:
- Community care assessments are increasingly focused on risk management.
- Risk containment is utilized as a strategy for rationing scarce resources.
- High-risk situations attract more resources than lower-risk situations.
- Emphasis on negative risk and protection may hinder service users from defining positive risks.
Conclusions:
- Community care social work appears to be prioritizing risk containment over needs-based support.
- The current risk management approach may inadvertently limit service user autonomy and empowerment.
- A balanced perspective on risk, including positive risk-taking, is needed to foster user empowerment.