ABSTRACT

Social workers make risk assessments in accordance with their obligation to safeguard and protect children against neglect and abuse. To prevent serious problems, it is necessary to make assessments about the likelihood that social problems emerge in the first place. We investigated 57 Danish social workers’ risk assessments. We used the vignette methodology, setting up a fictitious case and asking respondents to assess two children’s risk of suffering problems in connection with the suicide of their father. We focused on the respondents’ assessments of the magnitude of risk and on how they referred, in their own words, to the protective and risk factors they particularly noticed. There were three results of note. (1) The social workers’ assessments of risk were very divergent. This was the case whether they expressed the magnitude of risk in words or as a percentage. (2) There was no close correspondence between risk assessments expressed in words and as a percentage. Social workers lacked words to communicate the magnitude of risk adequately. (3) There were no significant differences in approach to the assessment of children’s risk between social workers who rated the risk as high, medium or low. All were attentive to both protective and risk factors.

摘要

社会工作者根据他们保护和保护儿童免受忽视和虐待的义务进行风险评估。为了防止出现严重问题，首先需要对社会问题出现的可能性进行评估。我们调查了 57 名丹麦社会工作者的风险评估。我们使用了小插图方法，建立了一个虚构的案例，并要求受访者评估两个孩子因父亲自杀而遭受问题的风险。我们关注受访者对风险程度的评估，以及他们如何用他们自己的话提到他们特别注意到的保护性和风险因素。有三个值得注意的结果。(1)社工对风险的评估差异很大。无论他们是用文字还是百分比来表达风险的大小，情况都是如此。(2) 以文字和百分比表示的风险评估之间没有密切的对应关系。社会工作者缺乏语言来充分传达风险的大小。(3)高、中、低风险等级的社工对儿童风险的评估方法无显着差异。所有人都关注保护因素和风险因素。