Social Work for Sociologists: Theory and Practice

Moving from risk to Safety ● 73

with the most significant being deciding to remove children from their family
and home. There are always some children for whom this is necessary, but an
intense focus on risk avoidance can lead to the structuring of child protec-
tion organizations around the prevention of high-cost but low-probability
poor outcomes (especially child deaths) rather than focusing child protection
organizations on developing systems to support the well-being of all children
or provide for family needs (France, Freiburg, and Homel 2010; Howe 2010;
Macdonald and Macdonald 2010). This thinking can also lead to children
themselves being constructed as hyper-individuals, entirely separate from
their families, their schools, their communities, and their everyday lives
(Featherstone, White, and Morris 2014). Their needs and interests become
viewed as separate from, or even diametrically opposed to, those of their
parents, who are too easily demonized. This view overlooks the contextual
nature of child development and regards children’s relationships as unimportant
or as uniformly negative.
A critical response is needed if human service work is to respond meaning-
fully to the catastrophizing impulses of the risk society. In the child welfare
arena, beliefs about risk are affected by intense media scrutiny, a sense that
risks are pervasive and catastrophic, a faith in risk factor science, and the
nation’s policy orientation in relation to abused children. A convergence of
these concepts can contribute to risk-averse practice that discourages power
sharing with clients and constructs children as hyper-individuals. Practice
based on these drivers is seldom able to move beyond labeling clients as risky,
toward actually working for ethical change together with the family. A key
question for this chapter now emerges: what ways of thinking about risk are
more likely to lead toward a more humane family-based practice?

Social Work Theories: Strengths and Safety Perspectives

How can sociologists learn from the efforts of social workers to resist the
tendency to view risk in ways potentially at odds with the humanistic,
empowerment, and social justice aims of their profession? How can the
positive aspects of families and the actual needs and experiences of children
and their families be included in practice approaches? Human service work-
ers in many countries are aware of the negative effects that risk thinking
can have on practice and of the tendency of such thinking to overlook
structural risks and client capacities and resources. As a result, numerous
methods have been developed to enable a more humane response to risk
(see Stanford 2011). The two methods covered here—the strengths per-
spective and the signs of safety approach—relate primarily to microlevel
practice. These methods, derived from social work, might hold significant