Mark Hardy

High profile service failures in social work have ensured that the demand that practitioner decision making be both accurate and transparent has never been as vocal or persistent. Such expectations undermine both trust and legitimacy, and how best to respond represents perhaps the most challenging issue facing social work today. Of necessity, practitioners must make judgements in circumstances characterised by uncertainty and ambiguity, while the complexity of this undertaking is routinely cited as a confounding variable in efforts to generate and apply generalizable knowledge in a technical fashion. Here, we utilise developments in complexity theory to elaborate on why this might be the case, but also what, practically, social work might do about it. In particular, we respond to Munro’s (2010) suggestion that it is possible to differentiate areas of social work which can be proceduralised from those which should be judgement based. Utilising recent developments in complexity theory, we explore whether this can be undertaken on the basis of a ‘complexity continuum’ which enables classification of roles and tasks on the basis of inherent certainty or uncertainty. What is clear is that although such a model has utility, it also has evident limitations. In turn, these practical limitations have implications for discussions regarding the real world relevance of complexity theory, and for sociological theorising to social work more generally.

This article reports findings from a study investigating if, how and why concerns regarding risk are impacting on probation work in England and Wales from the practitioner perspective. It begins with a review of key debates regarding how 'the rise of risk' has come about and with what effects. I then briefly explain what the study entailed – its aims and objectives, methods and theoretical framework (governmentality). Findings from the study are then presented. These are at odds with the 'critical consensus' that risk has dramatically altered the nature of practice. The article concludes with discussion of the implications of these findings for ongoing debates regarding the significance of risk in probation practice.