In 2024, the government introduced an inquiry, Ds 2024:30, which was intended to grant social services expanded powers when consent was not available. The purpose of this study is to critically analyze the consultation responses to the inquiry Ds 2024:30 in order to examine how the concept of preventive work is expressed and oriented discursively in relation to the tension between trust and control, and to create an understanding of how the discursive expressions can be understood from a professional perspective. A critical discourse analysis has been used to answer the questions. It is the consultation responses to the inquiry Ds 2024:30 that have been analyzed, and the results show that there are three different discourses. One about prevention as a concept, one about the ideological starting point of preventive work, and one about the connection of preventive work to evidence and knowledge. What we have been able to conclude is that we have not been able to derive any clear definition of what preventive work in social work should entail without it being a value-neutral concept. There is a discursive tension between a trust- and relationship-based interpretation of preventive work versus a control- and discipline-based interpretation.