Risk in Probation Practice by Hazel Kemshall

Author:Hazel Kemshall [Kemshall, Hazel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367001025
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Improving judgements

If procedures do not necessarily guarantee the right outcomes (Starbuck and Milliken 1988) or indeed compliance towards managerially desired outcomes; is there any alternative way of improving judgements? For example, can more effective ‘practice wisdom’ on risk assessment be taught, and how could practitioners be assisted to tolerate higher levels of provisionality in the quest for hypotheses least likdy to be wrong? The latter will be particularly difficult to achieve in situations where managers expect to identify and predict the full range of risks, and where unknown and uncalculated risks are not easily tolerated. Coupled with the spectre of blame and censure, this undermines any assessment technique based upon such provisionality and uncertainty.

However, the contextual and variable nature of risk (Douglas 1986) may be better served by an assessment tool which is open to change and which can capture the dynamic nature of risk (Brearley 1982). Munro (1996) in respect of child protection assessments has attempted to encapsulate this notion within the concept of the competent practitioner as someone who can change their mind in the light of new information. She argues that the revision of judgement is the key to the avoidance of error. Misjudgements, whether due to value framing or the limited knowledge available on the day can be challenged by further information and evidence to the contrary. The issue for Munro is the reluctance of social workers to refine their judgements and to admit that their decisions may be wrong.

In the uncertain world of child protection risks, Munro acknowledges that ‘correct predictions’ cannot be guaranteed but that there is an important distinction between good and bad mistakes’ (Munro 1996, p.794). The key for social workers is how to distinguish: ‘Which errors of judgement are due to our limited knowledge and which to inadequate investigation and woolly thinking?’ (p.794). In effect, the distinction between informed reasoning and mere ‘gut reaction’. Munro argues that:

Analysis of the many public inquiries into child abuse tragedies reveals that inquiries understand the distinction between reasonable misjudgements and errors that deserve to be censured. However closer study of these reports shows how resistant social workers are to changing their minds and how powerful an influence this has on the conduct of a case. This reluctance to abandon beliefs should not be seen as a particular fault of social workers but as a general weakness of intuitive reasoning (Munro 1996, p.794. Reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press and the British Association of Social Workers).

In effect, some mistakes are ‘forgivable’ and some are not:

...while mistakes due to our limited knowledge are unavoidable, the errors arising from the biases inherent in intuitive reasoning can be reduced by social workers’ adopting a more critical approach to their judgements (Munro 1996, p.794. Reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press and the British Association of Social Workers).

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