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Journal ArticleDOI

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

Peter Humphries, +1 more
- 01 Dec 2002 - 
- Vol. 55, Iss: 4, pp 251-259
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TLDR
In this article, the experience of social workers working in Centrelink, the Australian Government's service delivery organisation, is explored in the context of increased reliance on technology to deliver its services to six million Australians.
Abstract
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.

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

TL;DR: This paper examined professional interactions with, and response to, changes in their work after the introduction of new technologies, focusing on the shift of accountabilities from professional values and identities to organizational and bureaucratic accountabilities.
Journal ArticleDOI

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

TL;DR: The authors examined professional interactions with, and response to, changes in their work after the introduction of new technologies, focusing on the shift of accountabilities from professional values and identities to organizational and bureaucratic accountabilities.
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Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Empowering Social Work Practice

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that ICT has been viewed with suspicion and has been narrowly used in social work primarily for managerial and monitoring purposes, and argue that the social work profession should more actively challenge and resist the limited use made of ICT, and promote the appropriate use of IMT to improve social work practice and empower service users.
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(Re) Shaping Social Work: An Australian Case Study

TL;DR: The authors explored the initial impact on one group of generalist social workers in working in the Australian income support agency-Centrelink, and found that the associated policy developments have the capacity to seriously destabilize social work, particularly in that they promote values and rationalities at odds with those assumed by the profession.
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e-Social work: building a new field of specialization in social work?

TL;DR: A wider range of available digital procedures has opened up a broader dimension regarding research, therapies, intervention, and intervention in social work as discussed by the authors, which has transformed the nature and practice of social work.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Limited accesspp: the information superhighway and Ohio's neighborhood-based organizations

TL;DR: The small size and small budgets of many NBOs make it difficult for them to acquire adequate computer technology, learn how to use it for Internet access, and make the most of that access.
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Social workers on-line: a profile

TL;DR: In this paper, a profile of social workers who utilize OE-Mene services was provided, and the on-line social worker demographics were compared to those of the National Association of Social Workers membership.
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Access and Use of Information Technology by Human Service Providers

TL;DR: In general, providers reported limited access to many types of information and strong needs for assistance in developing information technology ski...
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Technology investment trends

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a wide range of technological, business process reengineering, and organizational change projects, including using technology to connect social workers to enable collaborative case management, building databases with sophisticated querying applications that allow quick, effective decision making at the front-line and management levels, and expanding the number of ways clients can access services through the use of the Internet, kiosks, electronic benefit transfers.
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