The aim of risk assessment is to consider a situation, event or decision and identify where risks fall on the dimensions of ‘likely or unlikely’ and ‘harmful or beneficial’.
The aim of risk management is to devise strategies that will help move risk from the likely and harmful category to the unlikely or beneficial categories.
An enlarged idea of risk management based around the concept of ‘safeguarding incidents’ introduces the idea of professional and organisational learning from near misses.
(Bostock et al, 2005)