Social workers are at the heart of drives to improve child health and wellbeing, with knowledge sharing between them and other professionals viewed as a way to reduce the uncertainty associated with this area of risk work. We aim to fill a significant gap in the literature by examining how social workers assess, interpret, filter and share knowledge relating to risk and uncertainty – what we call the translation of risk – within their profession. Based on data from a qualitative study with social workers in England between 2012 and 2013, we identify two main approaches social workers employ. We conceptualise them as 1) reluctant translating, and 2) dynamic translating. Our analysis shows that epistemic assumptions such as how social workers conceptualise the fact/value separation; how they view what we call ‘grey evidence’; and how they understand the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, underpin how social workers translate risk. We add a new dimension to the literature on risk by arguing that we need to pay attention to the epistemological values that underpin ‘client-facing’ risk work. Thus, we aid understanding of not only how knowledge is shared in particular ways, but also why this is the case. We identify reasons why some social workers include valuable ‘grey evidence’ and prioritise adequacy over accuracy in their translations of risk. We highlight, however, that through an over-emphasis on accuracy and boundaries, evidence-based practice might end up driving out ‘grey evidence’ and inadvertently hampering effective decision-making, judgement and knowledge sharing on risk.

社会工作者是改善儿童健康和福祉的核心驱动力，他们与其他专业人员之间的知识共享被视为减少与此风险工作领域相关的不确定性的一种方式。我们的目标是研究如何社工评估，解释，筛选和分享知识与风险和不确定性，填补了文学显著的差距-我们称之为风险的翻译-中他们的专业。根据2012年至2013年期间对英格兰社会工作者进行的定性研究数据，我们确定了社会工作者采用的两种主要方法。我们将它们概念化为1）勉强翻译，以及2）动态翻译。我们的分析表明，认知假设，例如社会工作者如何概念化事实/价值分离；他们如何看待我们所谓的“灰色证据”；以及他们如何理解客观性与主观性之间的关系，奠定了社会工作者如何转变风险的基础。我们认为需要关注基于“面向客户”风险工作的认识论价值，从而为风险文献增加了新的维度。因此，我们不仅有助于理解如何以特定方式共享知识，还有助于理解为什么会这样。我们确定了一些社会工作者包括有价值的“灰色证据”的原因，并在其风险转换中优先考虑了充分性而不是准确性。但是，我们强调指出，由于过分强调准确性和界限，基于证据的实践可能最终会驱逐“灰色证据”，并无意间阻碍了有效的风险决策，判断和知识共享。