Social Work
ICT
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Social Work
ICT
Andrew Hill
Ian Shaw
Andrew Hill and Ian Shaw 2011
First published 2011
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Contents
About the Authors
Andrew Hill is Director of the MA in Social Work Programme in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York, England, and Lecturer in Social Work. He is a qualified social worker with a background in social work with children and families, including family support and child protection, fostering and adoption, and working therapeutically with abused children and young people. He has researched and written about play therapy for sexually abused children and the role of non-abusing carers. He is author of Working in Statutory Contexts, in which he examines the skills required for statutory social work and how such work may be consistent with anti-oppressive practice.
Ian Shaw is Director of the Graduate School in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York, England, and Professor of Social Work. He co-founded the journal Qualitative Social Work, and initiated the European Conference for Social Work Research. Much of his work is on the borders and research and practice, and sociology and social work, and is often informed by an interest in qualitative methodology. His recent work includes the Sage Handbook of Social Work Research. His current research includes the historical relationship between social work and sociology, especially in the USA. His forthcoming book is a reworking of his Evaluating in Practice.
Introduction
It has become commonplace to talk of the IT revolution, and to compare it with the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so rapid, so widespread and so profound have been the changes brought about by recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs). It seems that, in a very short space of time, computer-enabled communication and information storage has become an integral part not only of many peoples working lives, but also of the fabric of their social lives and their leisure activities. Increasingly we work, shop, play and socialise online.
Given that social work is, according to the UK Department of Healths careers website, all about people (Department of Health, 2007) it should not be surprising that ICTs have also become a highly significant part of social work. New, electronic communication methods are being used by professionals and service users alike, both formally and informally. New methods for storing and sharing information about people and about the complexity of their daily lives and circumstances are being introduced rapidly across social work.
This book seeks to assess the extent and the nature of the changes that are happening in social work, and to ask how they relate to the notion of best practice. The book is about the relationship between good social work practice and information and communication technologies (ICTs). The small word and in the title is therefore highly significant. The book considers how the increasing integration of ICTs may be changing the face of social work, for good or ill, and also how social work may perhaps be shaping the development and the use of ICTs. We do not assume that the relationship between ICT and social work is necessarily a case of oneway traffic new ideas from the world of ICT leading to new forms of social work practice. It may be that existing social work practices lead to changes in the way in which ICTs are understood, configured and utilised. But we are social work academics, not ICT specialists, and our primary concern is to promote critical thinking about what constitutes best practice in social work when it comes to its relationship with ICTs, whether .
Some may think that ICTs and social work are rather strange bedfellows. ICTs may have a seemingly all-pervasive reach into every area of our lives but are they really suitable for social work? After all, social work and computers seem to have very different logics. Computers are usually perceived to be all about standardised, unemotional processing of information, whereas social work is about paying attention to the needs and feelings of individual human beings. Computers are about speed and efficiency, whereas good social work practice goes at the pace of the individual service user. Computers, so it is thought, are best at doing sums and reaching quantitative, statistical judgements, whereas social work is largely about gathering and analysing qualitative information and making complex, situated, professional judgements. In fact, throughout the book we will be challenging the different strands of this apparent mismatch. We suggest that the relationship between social work and ICT may be rather more complex than the above sketch suggests and that, where there are tensions, they may not be the ones listed above.
