Risky Populations and Risky Identities: The Regulation of Trust and Relationships between Adults and Children

While risk is now a key focus of attention in modern society and one that influences most aspects of people’s day-to-day lives, in the area of child welfare it has had a particular impact on the development of policy and practice in the UK over the last few decades. Concern about risks to children have been greatly influenced by the overarching anxieties of the ‘risk society’ and its preoccupation with the many uncertain future risks generated by modernisation. The Internet, the economic situation and future employment prospects are just some of the factors that are seen to be making the lives of children and young people more risky now than in the past. Much of this concern focuses on the possible risks involved in children’s relationships with adults. These include the public anxiety about the dangers to children of abuse, neglect or, in extreme cases, even death, within the family setting, or the more general fear of male predators preying on children in the wider community. Although figures show that the probability of non-accidental child deaths is very small (Kearney, 2013) and that the threat from paedophiles is even less likely (Kitzinger, 1999; Corby, 2000) anxiety about risks to children have increased, rather than diminished. In this field, as with so many other aspects of modern society, the concern is now with the ‘distribution of bads rather than goods’ (Beck, 1992, p. 48).