70 ● Emily Keddell and tony Stanley
service practitioners, are regarded as responsible for managing risks and capable
of doing so with some certainty. This ability to manage risks becomes regarded
as a hallmark of a good citizen and a good practitioner; if one fails, the message
is that the person lacks personal responsibility, has failed to uphold his or her
side of the social contract between the state and the individual, and is therefore
justifiably excluded or sanctioned (Rose 1999).
Risk Factors and Their Limits
The privileging of attempts to quantify, control, and predict risk can lead to
highly technical, mathematical approaches to risk assessment, often based
on statistics. The science of risk factors can provide useful overviews of the
patterns of poor outcomes across populations, and it helpfully draws attention
to the cumulative nature of adversities. Its usefulness has, however, been over-
stated, possibly because it promises a “scientific” approach that is attractive to
governments intent on implementing policy based on an economic rationality
paradigm (Keddell 2015). A risk factor approach can be viewed as a method
of more precisely identifying individuals requiring remedial or preventive
intervention, thus heightening economic efficiency. However, identifying
that an individual has a particular risk factor does nothing to indicate the size
of that risk, nor does the risk factor inevitably lead to a negative outcome.
Risk factor calculations are limited in their ability to predict outcomes, as
they do not provide insight into how a variety of risk factors combine in a
particular family’s life (Munro, Taylor, and Bradbury-Jones 2014). Under-
standing the risk factors associated with poorer outcomes is a useful starting
point, but that understanding cannot replace a current understanding of the
family’s relationships, functioning, and context and the perspectives of both
the children and the adults involved. Mathematical approaches, including
actuarial approaches (the name for risk assessment tools based on statistical
risk factors), must therefore be combined with case-responsive types of risk
assessment, that is, those in which practitioners draw on their own understand-
ing of the case, as well as the relationship they have with the client family,
and their own practice wisdom, knowledge of theories, and understanding
of research, in order to make a sound decision. These latter factors are often
referred to as “professional discretion” or “consensus” approaches to risk
assessment (Munro 2005; Shlonsky and Wagner 2005).
Understanding Risk in the Context of Policy Orientations
Policy orientation is another important factor affecting the understanding
of risk and of the connections between the political context and human