Long Term Risks In Social Work

Social work comes with ambiguities and complications because of the very fact that a huge responsibility of accurate assessment of risk and decision making lies ahead (Welbourne, 2012). Making decisions is a crucial area which requires intellectual and emotional competence, along with the capacity to be a critique (Munro, 2008; Welbourne, 2012). In any case of children at risks, social worker doesn’t work alone, but works in a team with supervisor, families and various service agencies which means it can be challenging to have agreement from all sides (Munro, 2008). More to that, a social worker is always obliged to adhere to social work ethics such as promoting human rights and justice; but there can be situations when one has to coercively

Risk: Understanding risks, these are the harmful results of a negative event such as domestic violence, abuse, maltreatment, neglect, separation of parents, etc. which disrupts a child’s well being (Welbourne, 2012). It depends on the severity of consequences to determine which risks are immediate and which are long-term (Munro, 2008; Welbourne, 2012). Some examples from Britain shows that children/families receive services faster when there are seen, immediate harm to them but many times, those who had been assessed with long-term risks, which may be psychological abuse, were ignored because of absence of urgent dangers (Munro,

There is another model which counters the decision theory based on information and evidence which is known as satisficing. It is an alternative choice made from options which are readily found, and one doesn’t know the prior information of such choice (Munro, 2008). These were usually common before, but such alternative solution can create even more complex situations for the children at risks(Munro, 2008). Thus, satisficing may make the social workers ignore the long-term goals and drift from the professional standards (Munro, 2008). However, in all forms of decision-making, power relation influences at all