How and when should we use technology in social work?

Everyone who knows me or has heard me speak knows how passionate I am about targeted prevention, using the option of care wisely and sparingly, and holding risk in the community with children and young people's families. So, it might surprise you that in this blog I am going to write about the much less sexy topic of record keeping. This requires urgent attention, for three simple reasons:

Many of you will be aware of BASW's 80/20 campaign, to increase the time social workers are able to spend in direct work with children and their families. Although it was a self-selecting survey of social workers, it found that social workers spend only 20 per cent of their time working face-to-face. In Essex, we found that our staff spend 40 per cent of their time in direct work. Good, you might think; but social workers also spent an average 15.7 hours per week on laptops recording their work. So, if we want social workers to spend more time using their skills to work with families to improve outcomes for children, it is probably time to revisit recording practice. After all, it is now 16 years since Walker, Shemmings and Cleaver produced Write Enough: Effective Recording in Children's Services.