‘Decision fatigue' blights social work practice

A study carried out by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – often referred to as the government’s “nudge unit”– into decision making by social workers handling initial referrals to the child protection system, found that the “mental effort” of making constant decisions about cases throughout the day has a negative effect on practitioners’ abilities.

The gradual depletion of mental resources “can lead to poor decision making and even decision avoidance”, the report says, with social workers interviewed at five local authorities taking part in the study admitting to experiencing the effects first hand.

One practitioner told researchers that they were so exhausted "by 3pm on a Thursday" that they could not decide what tea to drink “let alone decide on a referral without help”.

The study, commissioned by the Prime Minister and Education Secretary, found many child protection social workers relied on intuition to make decisions, based on an understanding of what works best rather than being underpinned by a robust evidence base.

This puts the onus on personal judgment driving decision making rather than it be systems-led, the report says. This problem is compounded by the need to make many difficult decisions quickly.

BIT also concluded that there was a lack of feedback on the effectiveness of decision making, too much deference is given to senior practitioners’ abilities to make the right decision and poor information passed to social workers from other agencies hindered their ability to come to the right conclusions on cases.

To move from decision making based on “experience and expertise”, it recommends the Department for Education develop systems that enable decisions and their outcomes to be mapped, with the view to creating a more evidence-based practice model.

In addition, “feedback loops” should be introduced to help social workers learn from past decisions – possibly through using a randomised controlled trial to measure the outcomes of decisions over a period of time – and the DfE should work with a group of local authorities to “streamline” information sent to child protection social workers from other agencies to reduce inappropriate referrals.

The BIT works with many government departments and local authorities to assess whether services are delivered in line with evidence gathered through academic research.