Parsloe suggests that welfare staff have to take into account 3 different types of risk within the care sector.
- Risk to service users from other people, usually their own relatives.
- Risk to users themselves from their own behaviour
- Risk to known or unknown others from service users (Parsloe 1999 p9-10)
When you define something as a risk you are potentially creating losses and gains, for example if you have to make the decision to put an elderly person into a care home you will be creating a series of losses and gains for that person. Therefore this subject cannot be taking lightly the decisions you make regarding risk assessments and can ultimately change service users life.
“Analysing and risk behaviour means assessing competing rewards and costs” (Griffiths & Waterson.)
The losses for a service user obviously depend on the circumstances but they would be defined, as things like:
- Independence – having to go into a care home.
- Dignity - not being able to wash and dress yourself.
Both of these losses would also have an impact on the service users Self Esteem.
The gains for the service user would also depend on the circumstances but a few examples would be:
- Support – gaining support from the welfare sector to help them have a happier life.
- Friendship – If they were living on their own, they would make friends with people in a care home for example with people in the same situation as themselves.
- Treatment – They might just need some form of medical treatment to help them return to their normal way of life.
In order to evaluate risk we need to determine the hazards that are more likely to cause the greatest harm and therefore hopefully control these hazards. In social care, hazards would be very different from the hazards that you would be assessing in the work place for instance in the work place a hazard would be things like chemicals, electricity using fork lifts etc.
In the care sector a hazard would be defined as things like a child not adapting to being removed from their family, an elderly blind person being left in a house on their own.
In order to evaluate these hazards we need consider the LIKILYHOOD and the SEVERITY of the hazard.
When assessing the severity of a situation it is important to think about what is the worst that could happen in that given situation.
When assessing the likelihood, it is making a judgment on the severity and the chance that it might happen i.e. is it likely, unlikely etc.
This is defined as follows:
(HSENI handout Professional Practice) 28.10.03
To conclude “Risk assessment in social work is not a precise, scientific or straight forward business, it might be the case that the technical decision is a ‘decision under uncertainty’ (Nogel 1976 p143) so we would in fact say that the social workers assessment was correct or incorrect according to the outcome”(Banks S. 2001, p 19).
References:
Alaszewski A. and Manthorpe J. (1991) Literature review: “Measuring and Managing risk in social welfare” British Journal of Social Work 21 277-90
Banks S (2001) Ethics & Values in Social Work New York Palgrave.
Griffiths & Waterson “Facts, fantasies and confusion: Risk and Substance Use” date unknown publisher unknown.
HSENI Booklet (Risk Assessment Simplified) 28.10.03
Parsloe P. (1999) “Risk Assessment in Social Care and Social Work”, London, Jessica Kingsley.
Oxford English Dictionary (1997) Oxford University Press