From MORAL PANIC to MORAL ACTION: Social Policy and Violence in Human Services

Abstract

The management of high-risk behaviours from consumers of human services remains a controversial area of practice. Within this broader agenda the use of physical restraint has emerged as a key, if implicit, dilemma for social policy agendas on both sides of the Atlantic. The nature of acceptable methods is the focus of contending perspectives and belief systems. This paper will examine the beliefs and paradigms which sustain the current absence of effective regulation of physical restraint, and suggest that the impact of specific attributional and explanatory paradigms effectively maintains the current social policy vacuum on acceptable approaches and the continuing use of high risk methods. Achieving safer practice in behavioural management requires a paradigm shift which involves the recognition and rejection of the current individualising paradigm in favour of a broader, holistic approach in which the significance of contextual service factors are recognised and addressed and the use of high tariff restraint techniques rigorously monitored and restricted.