TY - JOUR A1 - Turney, Danielle A1 - Alfandari, Ravit A1 - Taylor, Brian J A1 - Ghanem, Christian A1 - Helm, Duncan A1 - Killick, Campbell A1 - Lyons, Olive A1 - O’Leary, Donna A1 - Ebsen, Frank A1 - Bertotti, Teresa T1 - Threshold Decisions in Social Work: Using Theory to Support Practice JF - The British Journal of Social Work N2 - Decision making is an intrinsic and complex aspect of social work practice, requiring consideration of diverse but connected aspects. Decisions are often required as to whether a situation requires protective state intervention or whether it reaches the criteria for public or charitable services. Such instances of deciding whether or not a situation is ‘on one side of the line or the other’ are referred to in this article as ‘threshold judgements’. This article draws on experiences and material from a range of social work contexts to explore generalisable theory-informed understandings of ‘threshold judgements’ and ‘threshold decisions’ to develop knowledge and skills on this topic. The article outlines signal detection theory and evidence accumulation (‘tipping point’) theory and discusses these as ways to understand the key concepts underpinning threshold decisions in social work. We then argue that although these threshold concepts are a necessary part of decision making in social work, as in many other aspects of life, they are not sufficient. Operationalising such decisions requires some form of sense-making. Naturalistic decision making and heuristic models of judgement are discussed as frameworks for practice which seem to be useful in this context. KW - decision making, heuristic, professional judgement, sense-making, signal detection, theory for practice, threshold, tipping point Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcae073 SN - 0045-3102 VL - 54 IS - 7 SP - 2996 EP - 3013 PB - Oxford University Press ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Turney, Danielle A1 - Alfandari, Ravit A1 - Taylor, Brian J A1 - Ghanem, Christian A1 - Helm, Duncan A1 - Killick, Campbell A1 - Lyons, Olive A1 - O’Leary, Donna A1 - Ebsen, Frank A1 - Bertotti, Teresa T1 - Threshold Decisions in Social Work: Using Theory to Support Practice JF - The British Journal of Social Work N2 - Decision making is an intrinsic and complex aspect of social work practice, requiring consideration of diverse but connected aspects. Decisions are often required as to whether a situation requires protective state intervention or whether it reaches the criteria for public or charitable services. Such instances of deciding whether or not a situation is ‘on one side of the line or the other’ are referred to in this article as ‘threshold judgements’. This article draws on experiences and material from a range of social work contexts to explore generalisable theory-informed understandings of ‘threshold judgements’ and ‘threshold decisions’ to develop knowledge and skills on this topic. The article outlines signal detection theory and evidence accumulation (‘tipping point’) theory and discusses these as ways to understand the key concepts underpinning threshold decisions in social work. We then argue that although these threshold concepts are a necessary part of decision making in social work, as in many other aspects of life, they are not sufficient. Operationalising such decisions requires some form of sense-making. Naturalistic decision making and heuristic models of judgement are discussed as frameworks for practice which seem to be useful in this context. KW - decision making, heuristic, professional judgement, sense-making, signal detection, theory for practice, threshold, tipping point Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcae073 SN - 0045-3102 PB - Oxford University Press (OUP) ER -