Getting it right: Talking with social work students about risk and justice
This article offers reflection on the tension between risk and justice in the context of working with social work students on child protection. Written within a Scottish context, the article begins by exploring tensions between different strands of policy. The article draws on the author’s experience of moving into social work education from practice and management and of working with social work students on issues of risk. Centred around a simulation of a case conference, the article explores how social work students engage with ideas about risk, and significantly about how fundamentally different outcomes can be reached from the same information. The article then identifies key themes in the discourse, and makes suggestions for research, in particular that research into the language practices of social work students would be a fruitful avenue for exploration.