Advancing social work research and practice : celebrating ten years of the Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group (DARSIG)

Abstract

Established in 2014 as one of several special interest groups under the European Social Work Research Association (ESWRA), the Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group (DARSIG) set out to foster understanding related to these topics across client groups, practice domains, educational settings and countries. Today, the DARSIG has 108 members in 29 countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the US. This article outlines key insights emerging from the DARSIG’s work and activities to date. The absence of shared terminology poses a challenge in cross-national and cross-sectoral collaborations (Bertotti and Fargion, 2023). The DARSIG’s work to build mutual understanding has simultaneously deepened awareness of similarities and differences among national and local decision-making contexts. Key contributions include theoretical work on models of rationality for social work (see, for example, Taylor, 2021a; Helm, 2022; Helm et al, forthcoming), intuition in practice (Cook, 2017), decision-making thresholds (Platt and Turney, 2014; Turney et al, 2024) and teaching methods (Bertotti, 2016; Whittaker, 2018), contributing to the literature on critical thinking and error prevention in social work (Taylor et al, 2023). Collaboration has resulted in co-authored articles and commentaries (Søbjerg et al, 2020; Sicora et al, 2021; Alfandari et al, 2023a; 2023b; 2024; Turney et al, 2024), books and book chapters (Taylor et al, 2023), and the editing of journal special issues (Whittaker and Taylor, 2017; Taylor and Whittaker, 2018; McCafferty and Taylor, 2020; Alfandari and Killick, forthcoming; Helm et al, forthcoming), shaping evolving processes of practice, policy making, training and research in decision making, assessment and risk (DAR).