Social Work Podcast: What's the risk

This episode features a conversation with Dr Hannah Jobling, a Lecturer in Social Work at the University of York. Hannah has research interests in the policy-practice relationship and the roles of power and control in social work.

We discuss an ethnographic study which Hannah conducted on decision-making in mental health tribunals for Community Treatment Orders (CTOs). CTOs provide a framework for compulsory treatment of people with mental health problems in the community, and their use has grown rapidly since they were introduced in England and Wales over ten years ago.

Hannah’s study explores some of the reasons why few people are discharged from CTOs by tribunals and the importance of narratives of risk in their decision-making. The full paper can be downloaded here:

Jobling, H. (2019) ‘The legal oversight of community treatment orders: A qualitative analysis of tribunal decision-making’, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 62, pp. 95-103.