Social workers ‘frustrated’ by ICT

Cumbersome ICT systems are making social work fragmented and bureaucratic, an article in the Journal of Social Policy has said.

The report indicated that changes in family life and new organisational and administrative arrangements make it difficult for social workers to locate individual children in their familial and social contexts.

This is particularly evident in the growing reliance on ‘child-centric’ ICT systems, the report said.

The findings said that the ‘child-centric’ nature of ICT systems prevent carers from adequately commenting on family relations and that ICT designs discourage input through which observations, information and hunches can be shared.

One of the authors, Christopher Hall from Durham University said: “The government’s review of child protection is currently looking at how inspection can be removed and social workers given greater professional freedom, and how bureaucracy might be reduced.

“Evidence suggests that current ICT systems make it very difficult to locate children in their family and wider contexts, with practitioners clearly frustrated by their limitations and the amount of time spent serving them.”

The article said that practitioners see time spent on using restrictive ICT systems as a distraction from their face to face work.