A key feature of new public management is the tendency to equate quality and accountability with documentation (Tsui and Cheung, 2004). Human service organizations increasingly rely on computer databases to compile and record client information and to demonstrate outcomes for quality assurance and accountability purposes. This has resulted in substantial changes in work practices, processes and relationships for social workers. This paper draws on interview data from social workers in several Australian agencies to examine professional interactions with, and response to, changes in their work after the introduction of new technologies. It particularly focuses on the shift of accountabilities from professional values and identities to organizational and bureaucratic accountabilities. The paper recognizes that while social workers have always been subject to organizational accountabilities, due to the changes in social service delivery and limited practitioner input into the implementation of new technologies, tensions between professional and bureaucratic accountabilities have intensified.

Accountable and countable : information management systems and the bureaucratization of social work

Accountable and Countable: Information Management Systems and the Bureaucratization of Social Work

This paper develops Professor Eileen Munro's coverage of ‘emotional dimensions’ in her Review of Child Protection in England. It argues that managerialism has failed to recognise the importance of the emotional life of human beings and the importance of the relationships we build in social work and that this failure seriously hinders the quality and effectiveness of social work. The paper begins with an account of what an ‘emotional dimension’ might encompass and, drawing on conceptualisations mainly from neuroscience, looks at what is meant by the words emotions and feelings, affect, attunement and empathy. A second section looks at the skewed representation of logical thinking as innately superior to emotional and intuitive reasoning and the part played by conscious and unconscious elements within judicial decision-making. It then analyses the dangers evident in the more extreme and rigid forms of managerialism that can be found in some areas of social work and a final section argues that for managerial...

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Humanising Managerialism: Reclaiming Emotional Reasoning, Intuition, the Relationship, and Knowledge and Skills in Social Work

• Summary: This article argues that ICT has been viewed with suspicion and has been narrowly used in social work primarily for managerial and monitoring purposes. In light of the emphasis within social work on empowerment, the potential of ICT to facilitate empowering practice is explored• Findings: The article argues the social work profession should more actively challenge and resist the limited use made of ICT, and promote the appropriate use of ICT to improve social work practice and empower service users.• Applications : The article provides a rationale for using ICT in social work to address issues of service user powerlessness and economic and social exclusion. The potential uses to which ICT might be put within social work are discussed and examples are given of innovative social practice using ICT that could be usefully developed more widely.

Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Empowering Social Work Practice

The paper describes and analyses the design and implementation of a higher education student placement program in the community services sector. Principally ideas about partnerships and social learning informed the design. The placement program represents a significant innovation in work‐integrated learning, achieved through collaboration between a community services organisation and a university school of social science and humanities. It offers students a high quality learning environment arising from organisational capacity‐building based on partnership principles. The paper traces the challenges and complexities of creating a student learning community that impacts positively on the wider host organisation. It also charts the implications for university involvement in community engaged knowledge production focused on enhancing the student experience.

Partnerships and learning communities in work‐integrated learning: designing a community services student placement program

Social Work is just beginning to consider the full impact of technology on practice. In this paper the experience of social workers working in Centrelink, the Australian Government's service delivery organisation, is explored in the context of Centrelink's increased reliance on technology to deliver its services to six million Australians. The results of a survey that indicated nearly one half of Centrelink's social workers have received no formal training in how to use the technologies they rely so heavily on in their work are considered, as is the role of the social workers who are working as a part of Centrelink's call centre network. It is argued that social workers need to be careful not to confuse means and ends when it comes to utilising technology as a part of their practice.

Social work and technology: Challenges for social workers in practice: A case study

An innovative university/industry partnership has been developed between the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Centrelink (the Australian Government's Service Delivery Agency). This partnership has been established on a ‘no exchange of monies’ basis and has proved to provide clear specific benefits to the School of Social Work at ACU and Centrelink's National Social Work Services Team and also to both organisations more generally. The authors argue that this type of university/industry partnership offers a framework that has wide applicability in the human services where relationships between training institutions and ‘the field’ appear to be becoming increasingly difficult.

Creating synergy: Developing new forms of partnership between university and industry

This book aims to support and reinforce the view that social work practice is essentially an organisationally-based practice. Hughes and Wearing explore the idea that the organisation is the “vehic...

Peter Humphries

Papers

Social work and technology: Challenges for social workers in practice: A case study

Creating synergy: Developing new forms of partnership between university and industry

Organisations and Management in Social Work (2nd ed.)