I'm wondering - do social workers spend too much time on computer systems, paperwork and admin these days? How do you get round it?

 

I have been out visiting to a number of social services departments and in some adult services departments it did seem that some social workers, all be it reluctantly, saw themselves are care managers rather than social workers with most of their days spent simply organising care packages. This was most evident in some older people's teams due to the sheer volume of cases people were having to deal with.

 It's a massive shame, as social workers did not go into the profession to push paper or sit in front of computers but because of their people skills. It seems to be the way with most jobs these days though, that you just end up staring at a computer screen all day. There are now a few online therapy programmes and it will not be long before there are online social work programmes as well. Social workers will just end up sifting through the data and allocating services accordingly. 

From what social workers have told me, it is the paper work that gets them down and stops them doing the face-to-face work with their clients. But I'm not sure whether the IT systems are a problem. I'm quite interested to find out how web savvy social workers are and how accessible the IT is in their offices. We did some research last year which found that one fifth of social workers do not have their own computer at work. Is this still the case? And how easy is it to access the internet at work?

From where I've been it seems that access to computers and the internet varies considerably around the country, in both the statutory and P&V sectors.  However even with high levels of access to technology there has remained a problem of resistence to IT and social workers, whose skills are normally more about relating to people, don't tend to relate quite so well to even very clever interactive computer screens.  Add to this the fact that social workers are increasingly responsible for what would have previously been considered administrative skills (data inputting and typing reports for example) as new management information systems have come into effect, such as ICS, and you get a situation where it takes social workers longer to do the administrative functions of their job than there is time to spend with service users, which is not time or resource efficient.  This may of course become less of a problem as younger, more techno-savvy, student social workers continue to qualify and move into practice.

As for the future of social work - much of what social workers already do is administrative in creating and managing packages of care, and, with ever increasing pressure from governments to evidence the meeting of targets and providing 'best value' etc, together with media reporting that reinforces feelings of "can't do right for doing wrong" keeping up the pressure to tick the boxes to maintain an 'audit trail' just in case something goes wrong, I don't see this changing.  As this is the environment in which new social workers are training the expectations of many will not be any different.  I recall that even six or seven years ago the informal message was that if you really want to work with, help and support people to lead more fulfilling lives, don't train as a social worker, stay 'unqualified' or do something else such as counselling or therapy.  Prophetic in light of the increasing amount of time social workers now spend in front of computers?

 That's an interesting point. Do you think the answer might be to do something similar to what has happened in teaching, where assistants have been introduced to help control the class so that teachers can concentrate on teaching? Would it be useful to have social work assistants who dealt with all the admin side of things, or has the job now changed for good?

Some councils seem to be making a positive attempt to cut down on the amount of admin social workers are doing through giving workers laptops to take out on their visits, preventing them from having to type up written notes when they return, and the use of electronic paper which social workers write on to order equipment (hand rails etc)  using special pens and then the order, via blue tooth in their mobile phones, goes straight through to the equipment service. I appreciate that taking laptops out on visits may not be everyones cup of tea though.

Not sure - in the old days it was the team clerks (by whatever title) who did the admin and typing based on information provided to them by the social worker.  Presumably writing or dictating or filling out data forms was considered time wasting and with the increased availability of computers and expectations of technical literacy in modern generations I suspect that someone somewhere along the line thought it would save time and money for social workers to be directly responsible for these tasks.  Depends what you mean by social work assistants.  In many places this is another name for the old unqualified social worker and not an admin role and that having SWAs undertake admin tasks will be the same as it was when 'team clerks' did the job.  Has the SW job changed for good?  In some ways yes, but then I also think that things are likely to come back full circle again.  Eventually it will be recognised in the right places that the balance between keeping records and actually visiting and interacting with service users is out of kilter, just as it has with the police and teaching.  Perhaps the development of technologies such as voice recognition for typing and data inputting will improve and be a part of enabling a reversal of the current trend.

Good point Aimes - I come from a C&F and fostering background and so things like ordering equipment don't happen very often.  I have used a laptop in visits though, however because I can type fairly quickly quite a lot of people (especially children) find this distracting.  Others are concerned about what will be stored on record - having the laptop makes it more obvious that records are being kept (even though there is so much more open recording now) and older people in particular seem to feel uncomfortable with the formality of it.  I think in other situations it can be reassuring though if people think their equipment needs might be met quicker.  I have also used the laptop to draft an email with a service user during a visit so I can send it when I get back to the office (having tried to phone while with the service user).  They know what I've written and that it's not going to get forgotten.  It's all down to the pros and cons in the vast range of social work roles!

I've been a social worker for 26 years and while it is the case that administration has become more obtrusive, I remember as a student when workers were compalining about paperwork getting in the way of casework. In my view it's not the bureaucracy that has radically changed what social workers do but the misguided pursuit of professionalism much endorsed by us that has turned us into technicians with no independence.  I bet most of you spend several hours a week on the net but don't see that as geting in the way of your normal life. It's the depoliticisation of our work that worries me more.

 That's an interesting point. I wonder if it's possible to be a real social worker without being inherently political

I wonder how many people share your view Nihat - as you say professionalisation has been driven by social workers themselves, along with the likes of BASW, to tackle the low status of social work when compared with other public services, among other things.

At least bureaucracy and the need to ration services can be seen external impositions on practitioners.

As for the depoliticisation of social work, do people thing this can be reversed?

I actually think that if we were to reclaim our heritage as a vocation with the status that we might be aiming for, which I assume is about being seen to do what we do well and in a specilaised way, we would get away from the notion that so called ‘professionalism’ imbues itself with, that is separateness based on status rather than the values that we should be sharing within and outside of social work. What I want to get away from is the sterility that has engulfed social work in this pursuit of an unattainable objectified status. We will never be like doctors or lawyers because we do not have the legacy that those closed shop professions have, nor will we be like teachers or nurses because we do not command the trust that they do as professions that people have an experience of whether that like to come into contact with them or not. I want us to be what we were when I qualified, namely workers with a broader vision of  social justice based on challenging inequality from a community perspective rather than seeing individual gain, whether for service users on caseloads or for us in terms of career progression. I do not believe that challenging inequality is the same as opposing discrimination. In my view, inequality is a more fundamental division in our society and is based on class and economic relationships which social work these days ignores. In our daily work we ration services based on spurious notions of need and are comfortable with tools that sound like they are aiming for fair distribution of resources. Any social worker who fills in a form determined by eligibility criteria is denying a service to someone not on any sound social work principle but on cost grounds. The tacit acceptance of this and the new language that surrounds it is what I mean by the depoliticisation of social work. I meet college tutors who think core social work skills are about accessing services to individual clients, see students who are desperate to know which forms to fill so that they can demonstrate this as a learning experience and pass. What I do not see is a serious analysis of how this has led us to becoming care managers, mall able to demands of organizations and employers whose priorities are balanced budgets, star ratings and avoidance of public enquiries. As for how many sharing my views, I suspect not too many but would be delighted if I was wrong.

Taking Nihat's points about professionalisation and depoliticisation rasies several questions:

Are professional and political compatible?  The concept of professional is meant to convey a sense of expertise but also carries an air of independence (maybe misguided) and, dare I say it, superiority.  How does that tally with getting your hands dirty and fighting for a cause?

And to what extent would being a political activist affect GSCC registration?  When I became a union steward about 6 years ago (filling a vacancy of several years standing) the most common reactions among colleagues and managers ranged between derision ("what do you want to do that for") and horror ("oh no we're going to get all political") - yet although I believe in the trade union movement I would hardly describe myself as radical.

It seems as if many of the old social workers who were willing to stand up and argue for political causes all seem to have faded into submission while few of the young ones coming in seem terribly politically aware.  Is this a reflection on our society today?  Has our sound-bite, fast changing, society removed our ability to think?  How many can stick with a cause, maintain a thought, read a book without pictures?