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- Barfoed, Elizabeth Martinell
(författare)
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Digital clients : An example of people production in social work
- 2019
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Ingår i: Social Inclusion. - : Cogitatio. - 2183-2803. ; 7:1, s. 196-206
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Digital work has become part of social workers’ daily routines in countries where digitalisation is on the agenda. As a consequence, documentation practices are expanding—on paper as well as digitally—and include reporting detailed statistics about client interventions, filling in digital forms, and fulfilling local and national performance measurement goals. Standardised formulas with tick-box answers, fed into databases by the social worker, are examples of this digital endeavour. One example is the Addiction Severity Index (ASI), a questionnaire for estimating the client´s life situation and needs, used in addiction care. However, difficulties in making the social workers use the results of the standardised questionnaire in social work investigations, where a storied form is traditionally preferred, have made social workers reluctant to use them. To encourage the use of the ASI, a software program was invented to transform the binary data from the questionnaire into a computerised storyline, imitating the storied form. The aim of this article is to describe the context of the digital storyline production and to analyse the particular type of “digital client” it creates. Possible consequences are discussed, such as the absent (or distorted) client voice. It is proposed that documentation systems, in whatever form, should not be regarded as neutral carriers of information, but must be analysed for how clients are (re)presented and, ultimately, how social work is consctructed.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Martinell Barfoed, Elizabeth, et al.
(författare)
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Moving from ’gut feeling’ to ’pure facts’: launching the ASI interview as part of in-service training for social workers.
- 2012
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Ingår i: Nordic Social Work Research. - 2156-857X. ; 2:1, s. 5-20
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Several standardized assessment instruments have been introduced in social work in the last ten years. One of them, the Addiction Severity Index (ASI), is used today in the Swedish social services, and in the Prison and probation services. Swedish state authorities make strong declarations to implement the ASI-interview while critics are sceptic to both its practical relevance and epistemological grounds. Given this background, the launching of the ASI-interview is important to study as a case of how new instruments (flagged under the banner of EBP) are introduced. How is this rather new innovation introduced to the field of social work? The aim of the article is to analyse how the ASI-interview is presented and taught through in-service training for Swedish social workers. From observations of in-service training sessions, two professional styles seem to surface: a “traditional” and a “new” professional style. The course leader tends to use contrasting dichotomies as resources for constructing these professional styles. For example, “objectivity” and “scientificity” are presented as new professional ideals, rather than common sense or ”gut feeling”, the latter connected to traditional social work. The construction of a new professional style can be seen as an endeavour to achieve professional status in a more classical sense, partly by making the profession and its content more visible, and also by asserting its legitimacy as evidence-based work.
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| 4. |
- Martinell Barfoed, Elizabeth, et al.
(författare)
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The Desk as a Barrier and Carrier in Social Work
- 2022
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Ingår i: DESKBOUND CULTURES : Media and Materialities at Work - Media and Materialities at Work. - 9789198580082 - 9789198580099 ; 53, s. 141-141
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter explores the desk as a material object as well as its sym- bolic representations in social work from a professional perspective. As we will demonstrate, different and sometimes incompatible meanings and functions associated with the desk reflect current tensions and profession- al dilemmas: On the one hand, ever since the emergence of the social work profession, the desk has symbolized a distanced and uncommitted social worker, even representing asymmetric power relations.2 On the other hand, recent endeavors at professionalization, evidence-based practices, and ac- countable welfare work have resulted, to some degree unintentionally, in an administrative turn and a strengthening of the bureaucratic understand- ing of the mission.3 Social workers, often described as semi-professionals striving for higher status, face trade-offs between traditional ideals of being committed and working close to the community, and administrative work in the office.
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| 5. |
- Scaramuzzino, Gabriella, et al.
(författare)
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Swedish social workers’ experiences of technostress
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nordic Social Work Research. - 2156-857X.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines the factors explaining whether or not Swedish social workers experience technostress, and highlights examples of situations when social workers experience it. The article draws on a web survey (N = 523) via a quantitative analysis of responses and a qualitative analysis of answers to an open-ended question. Approximately one-third of social workers surveyed experienced technostress either often or quite often. The binary logistic regression analysis shows that technostress is mostly a question of social workers already exposed to high workloads and high levels of general job stress. Also, the feeling of not being able to leave the job at the end of the day correlates positively with technostress. Malfunctioning technology, duplication of work, email ‘bombs’, information overload, and the fact that technology tends to set the terms of the social work, instead of the opposite, were some of the examples of situations where Swedish social workers experienced technostress. These results suggest that technology risks add new ‘invisible’ work tasks that are time-consuming. One possible explanation why so many social workers experienced technostress is that the technology that has been implemented has increased the workload instead of decreasing it and that there is a lack of procedures, strategies, and sometimes even skills to manage the technology. The results provide useful insights for social work practice concerning how social workers experience technostress. Going forward, technostress as a working environment problem should be included in systematic management of the work environment.
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