SWN025 Chap.10 Objective Assessment and Technicist Practice
Objective Assessment and Technicist Practice
This chapter examines how assessment in human services claims objectivity and how that claim can produce harm.
It covers the modernist clinical model of assessment, the limits of objective theory in practice, technicism and the establishment practitioner, the evidence against relying on risk tools, Ramsay’s account of Camille, the realism and relativism debate, and Morley’s alternative of assessing risk by engagement.
The chapter also explains how education can produce establishment practitioners and why the lecture treats that as an ethical problem. It suits any incident in which you recorded, scored or reported on another person.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Modernist clinical assessment
- 02
Competing versions of events
- 03
Technicism and establishment practice
- 04
Managerial, conservative and technicist assessment
- 05
The harm in risk assessment
- 06
Camille’s story
- 07
Realism and relativism
- 08
Assessing risk by engagement
Worked example · free
Question an assessment that claims to be neutral
- 1Question objectivity: the scales assume one tangible reality that the worker can measure from outside, the modernist model the lecture critiques.
- 1Name the bias: judgements of cleanliness and motivation rest on normative cultural assumptions, as Camille’s case shows.
- 1Name the wider harm: risk tools have limited predictive value and can corrode the relationship and promote blame.
- 1Offer the alternative: assess risk by engagement, constructing an understanding of the situation with the family and confirming meanings.
Key terms
- Modernist clinical assessment
- Modernist clinical assessment is an assessment model that treats problems as measurable facts found by an objective outside observer.
- Establishment practitioner
- An establishment practitioner is a worker who follows organisational rules without questioning an unjust status quo.
- Realism
- Realism is the view that a single, stable reality exists independently and can be captured with the right techniques.
- Relativism
- Relativism is the view that there are multiple possible versions of reality because people constantly interpret experience.
- Responsibilisation
- Responsibilisation is a neoliberal discourse that individualises social problems and blames people for their experience of oppression.
- Assessing by engagement
- Assessing by engagement is an approach in which all stakeholders help construct the understanding of a problem.
Objective Assessment and Technicist Practice FAQ
What does the lecture say about risk assessment tools?
Drawing on Mulder, it reports that risk assessments have little predictive value, may expose some people to adverse consequences, can serve to manage staff anxiety, and can damage the relationship and promote blame. It recommends acknowledging uncertainty and making risk collaborative and not the sole focus.
Why is Camille’s story central to the week?
It shows an assessment that appeared objective but rested on normative cultural assumptions about caregiving. Even after the original risk was removed, her parenting was judged unsafe and her children were removed, which she described as the most significant trauma of her life.
Is the alternative to stop assessing risk?
No. The lecture keeps accountability but proposes assessing risk by engagement: treating the problem as interactive, involving all stakeholders in understanding it, staying sensitive to multiple realities, confirming information as you go, and using professional knowledge to interpret rather than impose.
What is an establishment practitioner?
The Week 8 lecture uses the term for workers socialised by mainstream education to accept an unjust status quo without question. They follow organisational rules rather than considering ethically virtuous action, avoid difficult questions, and so become easier for managers to control, a pattern the lecture links to technicism.
What does responsibilisation mean?
It is a neoliberal discourse, described in the Week 8 lecture, that individualises social problems so that people are blamed for their own experience of oppression. In Camille’s case it helps explain how an assessment could focus on her parenting while the structural conditions of her life dropped out of view.
Assessment move
If your incident involved any assessment, write down the facts you recorded and, beside each, the standard you judged it against. Then read Fook’s chapter on problem conceptualisation and assessment and the Morley and O’Bree reading for Week 8. In the essay, use the realism and relativism debate to explain why your judgement was not arbitrary but was not neutral either, and show what engagement would have changed.
If you have time, compare two accounts of the same event from your placement, as the lecture does with its extracts, and note what each one makes look objective. If your incident did not involve a formal assessment, apply the same questions to the informal judgements you made about the people involved.
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