In their work with the homeless, the dangerous and the disordered, helping agencies and the workers they deploy are faced, on a daily basis, with the task of engaging people whose essentially anti-social stance is, or is construed to be, one of a refusal to join in. The premise of our discussion is that, despite considerable attention over recent years having apparently being addressed to the problems of the socially excluded, there remains, and will most likely always be, a group of people who refuse to be engaged.