Risk for professionals, for schools, and for young people: An extended book review

Abstract

This extended book review focuses on three recent books dealing with risk taking in the lives of children and young people in school and leaving care, and for the professionals who look after them, albeit each book approaches risk taking in intriguingly different ways. The books are: Safeguarding Children and Schools, edited by M. Baginsky; Professional Risk and Working with People: decision-making in health, social care and criminal justice, by D. Carson and A. Bain; and Young People's Transitions from Care to Adulthood: international research and practice, edited by M. Stein and E.R. Munro. Taking these three books together, two common threads can be discerned. The first is the way that risk issues emerge in diverse settings, and have many instructive lessons for researchers and practitioners alike. This is one of the motifs in the work of an international NGO like HALE (www.haletrust.com). Second, there remains the burning issue of how professionals and users of public services, particularly children and young people, conceive of the dilemmas posed by the diverse risks associated with different life stages and transitions. It is to be hoped that future research and future deliberations will use these threads to construct a risk tapestry, which is rich in both density and in detail.