Examples of risk factors in social work include:
- Risk that a person will fall back into self-destructive behaviors (drug/alcohol use, self-harm, self-defeating thoughts, etc.)
- Risk that a person may harm themselves or others
- Risk of a child being in danger if left in a home
- Risk of a social service policy having a detrimental impact on a community (e.g., increasing crime)
What are the risks social workers face?
workers in regard to safety and risk. Social workers that work within each department both deal with clients in crisis, dangerous home environments, abuse cases and potential violence. There needs to be a clear understanding of risks faced by social workers and their desire for safety training in order to implement
What are some social risk factors?
- Spouse abuse or child abuse or neglect
- Problems with alcohol or substance use
- Being in jail or prison
- Homicidal or suicidal behaviors
- Having other mental health disorders such as depression or anxiety
- Low social and economic status and homelessness
- Premature death, usually as a result of violence
What are individual risk factors?
Individual-level risk factors. may include a person’s genetic predisposition to addiction or exposure to alcohol prenatally. Individual-level protective factors. might include positive self-image, self-control, or social competence. Key Features of Risk and Protective Factors . Prevention professionals should consider these key features of ...
What are protective and risk factors?
Risk and protective factors often are mirror images of each other. For instance, a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for disease, while physical activity is protective. For some risk and protective factors, the picture is more complex. Moderate alcohol drinkers, for example, have the lowest risk of heart disease, abstainers have the next ...
What are risk factors examples?
Risk factor examplesNegative attitudes, values or beliefs.Low self-esteem.Drug, alcohol or solvent abuse.Poverty.Children of parents in conflict with the law.Homelessness.Presence of neighbourhood crime.Early and repeated anti-social behaviour.More items...•
What is risk and protective factors?
A protective factor can be defined as “a characteristic at the biological, psychological, family, or community (including peers and culture) level that is associated with a lower likelihood of problem outcomes or that reduces the negative impact of a risk factor on problem outcomes.”1 Conversely, a risk factor can be ...
What are the 6 types of risk factors?
3.2, health risk factors and their main parameters in built environments are further identified and classified into six groups: biological, chemical, physical, psychosocial, personal, and others.
What are the 5 types of risk factors?
Risk factors in health and diseaseBehavioural.Physiological.Demographic.Environmental.Genetic.
How do social workers do risk assessments?
The stages used in assessing risk in social work include:Stage 1: Gather information.Stage 2: Assess harm and risk of harm.Stage 3: Decide the response.Stage 4: Decide the outcome.Stage 5: Review risk assessments during an ongoing intervention.
How risk factors affect mental health?
Risk factors Research tells us that early childhood experiences, particularly adverse ones – such as poverty, deprivation, physical or sexual abuse, having a parent or carer with a mental health problem, witnessing domestic conflict or violence – have an impact on mental health.
What are the 4 types of risk factors?
Risk factors are characteristics at the biological, psychological, family, community, or cultural level that precede and are associated with a higher likelihood of negative outcomes.
How do you identify risk factors?
8 Ways to Identify Risks in Your OrganizationBreak down the big picture. ... Be pessimistic. ... Consult an expert. ... Conduct internal research. ... Conduct external research. ... Seek employee feedback regularly. ... Analyze customer complaints. ... Use models or software.
What are 4 types of risk Behaviour?
The majority of adolescent death and illness are caused by risk behaviours that can be grouped into four categories: tobacco, alcohol and drug use; dietary behaviours; physical activity; and sexual behaviours [6, 7].
What means risk factors?
: something that increases risk or susceptibility.
What are the 3 categories of risk factors?
Here are the 3 basic categories of risk:Business Risk. Business Risk is internal issues that arise in a business. ... Strategic Risk. Strategic Risk is external influences that can impact your business negatively or positively. ... Hazard Risk. Most people's perception of risk is on Hazard Risk.
Why is it important to know risk factors?
Knowing the risks you and your family may face can help you find ways to avoid health problems. It can also keep you from fretting over unlikely threats. Knowing the risks and benefits of a medical treatment can help you and your doctor make informed decisions.
What is the meaning of risk factor?
something that increases risk: something that increases risk or susceptibility poorly controlled hypertension is a risk factor for coronary heart disease.
What are 5 protective factors?
Five Protective Factors are the foundation of the Strengthening Families Approach: parental resilience, social connections, concrete support in times of need, knowledge of parenting and child development, and social and emotional competence of children.
What are risk and protective factors in child development?
Key protective factors include mothers having at least some secondary school education, better home circumstances, and healthy birth weight, and key risk factors include maternal anaemia in pregnancy, poor maternal health (such as HIV), and maternal mental health problems.
What is a risk factor in health?
FAK-ter) Something that increases the chance of developing a disease. Some examples of risk factors for cancer are age, a family history of certain cancers, use of tobacco products, being exposed to radiation or certain chemicals, infection with certain viruses or bacteria, and certain genetic changes.
What are the risk factors in social work?
Examples of risk factors in social work include: • Risk that a person will fall back into self-destructive behaviors (drug/alcohol use, self-harm,...
Why would social services do a risk assessment?
The social worker risk assessment in social services is performed to weigh the risk of leaving a child in a potentially dangerous environment and t...
What methods are used in risk assessment in social work?
One of the risk assessments social work professionals can use for any type of client and client situation is a 5-stage assessment. Each stage guide...
What are some social services risk assessment questions?
Some of the social services risk assessment questions social workers will ask of a parent when doing a risk assessment include: • What do you most...
How does social support affect health?
One concept used to explain how social support affects health is buffering. For example, stress-induced decrements in immune function have been shown by research on medical students undergoing exams, but the decline was particularly pronounced for those lacking social buffers—those who reported being lonely (Glaser et al., 1992; Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1994). Research involving people going through major life transitions (such as loss of a spouse or birth of a child) illustrates that social networks and social support influence the coping process and buffer the effects of stressors on health (Hirsch and Dubois, 1992; Rhodes et al., 1994; Walker et al., 1977).
What are the most effective interventions for behavioral risk factors?
The most successful interventions of the many clinical trials incorporated elements of social or organizational change to modify individual behavioral risk factors, such as alcohol and tobacco consumption, diet, and physical activity. Most behaviors are not randomly distributed in the population, but rather are socially patterned and often cluster with one another. Thus, many people who drink also smoke cigarettes, and those who follow health-promoting dietary practices also tend to be physically active. People who are poor, have low levels of education, or are socially isolated are more likely to engage in a wide array of risk-related behaviors and less likely to engage in health-promoting ones (Adler et al., 1994; Matthews et al., 1989). This patterned behavioral response led Link and Phelan (1995)to speak of situations that place individuals “at risk of risks.”
How does social integration affect restorative behavior?
Other research examines possible mechanisms, such as the extent to which significant others promote and encourage positive health practices (Berkman, 1995; Taylor et al., 1997). For example, social integration could enhance the beneficial effects of restorative behaviors, such as sleep. Sleep is a quintessential active restoration performed without immediate social contact. Although lonely individuals in one study slept as many hours as did socially embedded people, responses to the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (Buysse et al., 1989) revealed that lonely individuals reported poorer sleep quality, longer sleep latency, and greater daytime dysfunction due to sleepiness than did socially embedded individuals. Other data confirm that lonely people sleep less efficiently, take slightly longer to fall asleep, evidence longer rapid eye movement latency, and awaken more frequently during the night than do embedded individuals (Cacioppo et al., 2000). Another study (Lewis and Rook, 1999) found that control in social relationships (that is, influencing and regulating social networks) was associated with more health-enhancing behavior, but with greater distress.
What are the health differences between socioeconomic groups?
A strong and consistent finding of epidemiologic research is that there are health differences among socioeconomic groups. Lower mortality, morbidity, and disability rates among socioeconomically advantaged people have been observed for hundreds of years and have been replicated using various indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) and multiple disease outcomes (Kaplan and Keil, 1993; Syme and Berkman, 1976). Educational differentials in mortality have increased over the past three decades in this country (Feldman et al., 1989; Pappas et al., 1993; Tyroler et al., 1993). Moreover, formal comparisons of the mortality differences associated with education show that relationships between educational attainment and mortality are stronger in the United States than they are in most European countries (Kunst and Mackenbach, 1994).
What is the interplay of biological, behavioral, and sociological influences?
Health and Behavior: The Interplay of Biological, Behavioral, and Societal Influences.
Why do poor people behave poorly?
Understanding why “poor people behave poorly” (Lynch et al., 1997a) requires recognition that specific behaviors once thought of as falling exclusively within the realm of individual choice occur in a social context. The social environment influences behavior by shaping norms; enforcing patterns of social control (which can be health promoting or health damaging); providing or not providing environmental opportunities to engage in particular behaviors; and reducing or producing stress, for which engaging in specific behaviors might be an effective short-term coping strategy (Berkman and Kawachi, 2000). Environments, especially social contexts, place constraints on individual choice. Incorporating the social context into behavioral interventions led to a new array of clinical trials that take advantage of communities, schools, and worksites to achieve behavioral change (see Sorensen et al., 1998; Chapter 6, this volume).
Does income affect health?
It is possible that different aspects of SES may lead to poor health through different pathways. For instance, income may influence outcomes very directly through material resources whereas occupational-based rankings may impact job-related psychosocial stresses and education may influence health-related behaviors. However, because these aspects of SES are usually highly correlated with each other, these distinct pathways are extremely difficult to identify. Thus, disentangling distinct effects of education or income for example remains a major challenge.
What are the factors that make a person more likely to develop a problem?
As we said above, risk and protective factors are aspects of a person (or group) and environment and life experiences that make it more likely (risk factors) or less likely (protective factors) that people will develop a given problem or achieve a desired outcome.
What are the environmental factors that influence the chances of acquiring cardiovascular diseases?
Some of the environmental risk factors that influence the chances of acquiring cardiovascular diseases include community norms that favor large portions of unhealthy food (such as "Super-Sizing" at fast-food restaurants), poor access to adequate and culturally appropriate health care, and community norms that favor a sedentary life style.
When do you want to learn about the risk and protective factors for your issue?
The answer to this question depends in great part on the maturity of your group - how long you've been around, what you are doing now, your resources, and so on.
How do you identify risk and protective factors and use them to select the targets and strategies for your intervention?
Once you have an understanding of risk and protective factors, as well as when you should include them in your planning, the time is right to identify the particular risk and protective factors that your organization will address. The following few pages offer one possible way to go about doing this.
What are the factors that influence the development of cardiovascular disease?
Some of the factors that influence the development of cardiovascular diseases (CVD ) include physical activity, diet, smoking and regular health screening. More specifically, some of the modifiable risk factors for CVD include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, physical inactivity, and diabetes.
What is the term for protective factors?
Another term used for protective factors is "assets. ". So-called "asset-based" approaches put the emphasis on the positive (protective), not the negative (risk), factors that contribute to outcomes. As with risk factors, research suggests that the greater the number of assets, the more likely are positive outcomes.
What are personal factors?
Personal factors are things that are unique to each individual (or group ). They include an individual's knowledge, skills, experience, history, and genetic makeup. Here is more specific information on the types of personal factors that contribute to risk and protection:
What is risk in social work?
Risk can be described as a ‘hazard, or a chance/likelihood of a loss or a particular event to occur’ (Collins, 2012), which can appear as a great uncertainty in relation to social work when intervening in people’s lives. Over the years this has been more formalised by statistical probability and structured assessment tools to guide professionals. Risk across the continuum of social work can be placed into two general categories, those risks that people pose to themselves or others and those risks which people are exposed to (Kemshall, 2007). Risk taking and management needs to be balanced between the uncertainty of unnecessary harm and dangers that worker and service user may be exposed to. The right to protection and the right to take risks need to be thoroughly addressed and considered, this in its own right will highlight many ethical dilemmas. Intervention must be justified; on the other hand society has a duty to ensure children are not exposed to abusive situations. Managing risk should be an opportunity to also seek or increase positive outcomes, not just to avoid danger but to reduce the odds against it (Calder, 2008 Care Council of Wales, 2002, 4, Corby, 2001).
What is risk assessment in social work?
There appears to be no definite explanation of risk or risk assessment in social work and whether it refers to only negative or harmful outcomes, the balance of good against bad outcomes or whether it even includes the possibility of positive events (Calder, 2008). Risk appears to revolve around the concept of danger and potential harm and is not only related to service users but professional and organisational practice. Assessing risk requires interference in family life and the professional needs to be conscientious of how this is managed in regards to how they engage with service users (Calder, 2008, CCW, 2002, 1-3).
What are the aspects of risk assessment?
Corby, (1996) suggested that there are three aspects to risk assessment in child protection. These are preventative, investigative and continuation risk assessment (Coulshed & Orme, 2006, Kenshall & Pritchard, 2001). Preventative risk assessment is considered before any involvement by agencies takes place and may influence the decision whether to intervene or not. Preventative risk assessment is based on indicative factors which inform judgements (evidence based practice) (Coulshed & Orme, 2006, Webb, 2006). Early work by Browne & Saqi (1998) cited in Kenshall & Pritchard (2001) gave indicators of predictive factors, for example: history of family violence, history of mental illness, drug or alcohol abuse, parent abused or neglected as a child and research on these matters will be used assess the likely cause or outcome or influence the way in which the professional intervenes. A criticism of this way of working is that it can detract from the professional autonomy in decision making. Social workers should be aware and inform themselves of available evidence as good practice but should be able balance this in each individual situation (Coulshed & Orme, 2006, Kenshall & Pritchard, 2001). This way of practice can highlight ethical issues for the worker by means of discriminating people because of past events or by factors that are out of their control, the danger is that non-abusers could be identified as abusers. Social workers may also intervene when there is no evidence of abuse which can be seen as intrusive and demonstrates the importance of balancing rights and responsibilities (Coulshed & Orme, 2006 CCW, 2002, Webb, 2006).
What is an investigative risk assessment?
Investigative risk assessment can also be known as an initial assessment and is usually brought to the attention of social services departments by someone who has expressed concerns, this maybe another professional or a member of the public.
Is it difficult to assess risk in social work?
Assessing and safeguarding children from significant harm is a major role in social work but it can be difficult to assess risk to a high degree of accuracy as factors are largely cumulative and research has shown that it can be difficult to anticipate long term outcomes (Calder, 2008, Scie, 2005).
What is the role of social worker in identifying risks?
The social worker or social care practitioner jointly with the adult and/or carer will identify – name, define – the risks that the adult and/or carer is facing, or is likely to face, or is causing, or is likely to cause others. Within the risk-identification stage, it is important to identify both the potential benefits and the potential harms ...
What is the role of social worker in assessing the potential benefits and harms of a decision?
Once there is clarity and agreement on potential beneficial and harmful effect of the decision, action, behaviour, the social worker or social care practitioner will assess with the individual the impact and likelihood of each of the potential benefits and harms identified, to assess the risk.
What is risk?
Risk is the probability that an event will occur with beneficial or harmful outcomes for a particular person or others with whom they come into contact.
What factors increase the risk of falls? What would be useful to know to ascertain if there is risk of falls?
Find below a list of factors that increase the risk of falls or information that will be useful to know to ascertain if the adult and/or carer is at risk of falls.
What factors increase the risk of carer breakdown? What would be useful to know to ascertain if there is risk of carer breakdown?
Find below a list of factors that increase the risk of carer breakdown or information that will be useful to know to ascertain if the carer is at risk of breakdown.
What is the next step in managing risk?
Once the risks have been identified and assessed, the next step is to agree with the adult and/or carer how the risks are going to be managed. Risk enablement and positive risk-taking are ways of managing risks positively.
How to deal with risk?
To deal with risk properly, it is crucial to distinguish between the following stages in the process: Understanding the person's circumstances. Identifying risks. Assessing impact and likelihood of risks. Managing risks – risk enablement and planning.
What are the factors that contribute to mental health?
These are frequently referred to as protective and risk factors. The presence or absence and various combinations of protective and risk factors contribute to the mental health of youth.
What are protective factors?
A protective factor can be defined as “a characteristic at the biological, psychological, family, or community (including peers and culture) level that is associated with a lower likelihood of problem outcomes or that reduces ...
What is the need for schools, families, support staff, and communities to work together to develop targeted, coordinated, and?
Statistics reflecting the number of youth suffering from mental health, substance abuse, and co-occurring disorders highlight the necessity for schools, families, support staff, and communities to work together to develop targeted, coordinated, and comprehensive transition plans for young people with a history of mental health needs and/or substance abuse.
How do risk factors affect a person's life?
For example, risk factors such as poverty and family dysfunction can contribute to the development of mental and/or substance use disorders later in life. Risk and protective factors within one particular context—such as the family—may also influence or be influenced by factors in another context. Effective parenting has been shown to mediate the effects of multiple risk factors, including poverty, divorce, parental bereavement, and parental mental illness.
Do risk factors have a greater chance of being more likely to be protective?
In other words, people with some risk factors have a greater chance of experiencing even more risk factors, and they are less likely to have protective factors.
What are risk factors?
Risk factors are those elements in a young person’s environment that increase the likelihood of them engaging in health compromising behaviours. They exist in all domains of social development – community, family, school and peer/individual. Risk factors are identifiable throughout the developmental continuum, and are consistent in effects across races and cultures.
What are the risk factors used in CTC?
The risk factors used in CTC have been shown in multiple longitudinal studies to be reliable predictors of at least one of six adolescent health and social problems – alcohol and drug abuse, antisocial behaviour, youth violence, school failure, anxiety/depression and teenage pregnancy.
What is social development strategy?
The Social Development Strategy provides a framework that explains to communities how to increase protective factors through everyday interactions with children and adolescents.
What Are Risk and Protective Factors?
- As we said above, risk and protective factors are aspects of a person (or group) and environment and life experiences that make it more likely (risk factors) or less likely (protective factors) that people will develop a given problem or achieve a desired outcome. Often, risk and protective factors can be considered flip sides of the same coin. For...
General Principles About Risk and Protective Factors
- Before going further, let's look briefly at some general principles about risk and protective factors. These are things that are true for all of the "subtypes" of factors: risk and protective, personal and environmental, social and physical. Research has consistently shown us that: 1. Many risk and protective factors are related to multiple community outcomes. That is, they are important facto…
When Do You Want to Learn About The Risk and Protective Factors For Your Issue?
- So, you believe risk and protective factors are important, but are unsure when your initiative should address them. The answer to this question depends in great part on the maturity of your group - how long you've been around, what you are doing now, your resources, and so on. Generally speaking, the rule is the earlier, the better. If your organization is already up and runnin…
in Summary
- Having a solid understanding of risk and protective factors (and the people you target as beneficiaries) gives you an excellent base from which to develop strategies for your initiative. By reducing risk factors and enhancing the protective factors (assets) surrounding a given community issue, your organization can work effectively to address the community issues in th…