Violence risk formation: The move towards collaboratively produced, strengths-based safety planning

Abstract

Case formulation has been increasingly recognized as critical to the tasks of intervention and risk assessment with people who have been violent. As a practice, however, formulation has little evidence as yet to support it; this is in no small measure due to the heterogeneity in approaches to creating formulations. This chapter highlights some of the problems with case formulation and suggested ways of addressing these concerns by testing reliability and validity. There are a number of different approaches to formulation with people who have been violent currently being used. The danger of premature closure in terms of the practitioners understanding of the causal factors involved in offending, is hopefully offset by the emphasis in the formulation process on revisiting the causal model and revising it if it does not stand up to testing. The chapter explores key competencies and skill sets that needs to be developed by practitioners engaged in formulation. These include causal reasoning skills, co-production skills, cultural competencies, self-monitoring and self-reflection skills, skills in acknowledging uncertainty and not knowing, as well as being able to make conjectures and hypotheses and an up-to-date knowledge of the literature on violent offending.