Good Practice in Assessing Risk: Current Knowledge, Issues and Approaches

Maintaining a balance between managing and assessing risk and upholding the required high standards of practice in health and social care can be demanding, particularly in the current climate of increased preoccupation with the difficult tensions between rights, protection and risk-taking. This book is a comprehensive guide to good practice for those working with risk, covering a wide variety of health, social care and criminal justice settings including child protection, mental health, work with sex offenders and work with victims of domestic violence. The contributors discuss a range of key issues relating to risk including positive risk-taking, collaborating with victims and practitioners in the design of assessment tools, resilience to risk, and defensibility. The book also explores the role of bureaucracy in hindering high quality professional practice, complex decision-making in situations of stress or potential blame, and involving service users in assessment. This third volume of Good Practice in Risk Assessment and Risk Management reflects the latest policy and practice within health, social care and criminal justice and will be an invaluable volume to all professionals working in these fields. This series explores key practice areas for professionals working in social care, health care and the probation service. Contributors are drawn from a wide variety of settings, both in the voluntary and statutory sectors.