Approaches to risk assessment and management in child protection have been developed largely within an objectivist paradigm and this has led to an emphasis on prediction, control and culpability. This paper argues that the objectivist paradigm has failed to provide valid and reliable measures of risk and has replaced a focus on the subject (the individual) with a one‐sided focus on objectified risk factors. Because of these limitations, it is argued that risk should be explored from an alternative, subjectivist paradigm. The paper outlines the implications of this shift for social work practice with children and their families, by advocating the re‐instatement of the subject and a return to ‘relationship’ as the guiding rationale for social work intervention.

This paper argues that a critical analysis of the ideologies that inform contemporary child care has been missing from the ‘re‐focusing debate’. Such an analysis points up the necessity of reasserting a critical social work position in order to provide a basis for reconstructing practice and engaging with other social actors and their ideologies in an open and creative fashion compatible with Habermas’ aspiration of ‘communicative reason’.

The use of social pedagogy as a paradigm for critically appraising developments within child and family social work has been largely neglected. This paper outlines the work of Augusto Boal and his adoption of social pedagogy as a method for empowering oppres‐sed social groups in Brazil. It is argued that Boal’s approach can be adapted by using action research techniques to analyse and effect change in situations where child care professionals face daily contradictions in their attempts to both protect children and support families. To demonstrate its relevance to child care practice, a description is provided of how the approach was used with two groups of social work students – one undertaking qualifying training, the other post‐qualifying training. The results of this application suggest a new theoretical framework for practice which aims to establish communicative consensus around the needs of children and a mutual appreciation of roles and responsibilities.

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