Staff and client perspectives on the Journey Mapping online evaluation tool in a drug court program.

National level monitoring of adoption and use of information systems is becoming common practice, providing one set of indicators for success of e-health policies. This is not the case in social welfare, in spite of advancing national ewelfare policies. This article presents results of a national webbased survey of availability and use of electronic social services and social welfare client information systems in Finland. The survey conducted in 2011 was targeted at managers or ITleaders of public and private service provider organizations. The results show that the majority of social welfare service providers in municipalities have a client information system (CIS). A half of the public social welfare organizations use mobile systems for some purposes. Private service providers use CIS's somewhat less than local authorities. Small private enterprises generally do not have CIS's. Not all social welfare employees have a personal workstation. Information exchange between organizations is limited to read-only. There is little exchange of information between information systems. Internet access is more commonly available. Providers of social welfare services generally have a website with information on their operations. Public service providers are more likely to have their own IT personnel than private service providers. The percentage of CIS investment costs out of total ICT costs varies greatly from one organization to another. Local authorities invest more in ICT than private service providers. The development of e-welfare services has been rather slow over the past decade. Results will be used in development of national information services for social care in Finland. Keywords-social care; social services; private social welfare service providers; ICT; electronic information management; client information systems.

https://www.thinkmind.org/download.php?articleid=sotics_2012_5_20_30017

Use of ICT in Finnish Social Welfare - Situation in 2011

SUMMARY The public school system, one of the largest human service institutions in our nation, is continuously engaged in a struggle to balance the needs of a growing and diverse population with continuing threats of budget cuts. Under these conditions, it becomes even more critical that school social workers understand and appreciate the role of technology in delivering and evaluating services. To assess the effectiveness of school social work services, evaluation will have to be planned for, and systems of data collection and processing will have to be conducted on an ongoing basis. This paper outlines the process whereby school social workers in a local school district proceeded to introduce technology into their service delivery regimen. Secondly, the paper shows how such technology was, and may be, used to evaluate the services provided by school social workers in an alternative school.

Bhavana A. Pahwa Ma and Lmsw

Papers

Technology and School Social Work Services: Introducing Technology in an Alternative School