This article reports findings from the third part of a three-part research project examining the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientation in their practice. Whilst social workers in the UK have been encouraged to make such changes, they have been hampered by concerns to manage risk. Findings reported from the earlier parts of the project, indicated that there was potential for a substantial proportion of child protection work to be redesignated as child welfare work, but that where this was achieved in practice, there was evidence of the continued influence of child protection processes as social workers sought to manage the risks inherent in child welfare cases. The study reported here sets out to ascertain the views of parents who were subject to child welfare interventions. The findings indicate that while parents feel apprehension with regard to contact with social workers, in the majority of cases successful relationships are formed. It is argued that social workers display considerable skill in monitoring potential risks whilst engaging with families and that the subtleties involved in such activity are not captured by official measures of governance which concentrate on more abstract indicators of performance.