Can’t say it clearer than Alfie so I’ll just agree.

I have been a social worker for 28 years and practically in each of those years I’ve heard employers, trainers, supervisors, consultant say how they are going to reduce admin tasks to enable social workers to do more face to face work. I’m still waiting. Sadly social work and it seems BASW too is so enamoured by fads that they will follow any trend that pops up. AI is a confirmation programme, it tells you what you’ve set it up to tell you. If you were really interested in AI as a tool you’d stop buying from Amazon, get off Instagram, give up your store loyalty card and never use a price comparison site. AI isn’t the sophisticated tool we are being conned to think it is. Those claims that it will detect and diagnose cancer quicker and more accurately than medical consultations never tell you that it’s precisely programmed by those medics to analyse basic medical histories. Without coders being asked to model a program being AI is like that Walkman you excitedly bought that was going to last a life time. I say rely on human contact with all of the variables that often get in the way of “efficiency”. AI can’t detect mould, see traces of blood, it can’t smell urine and the identify feaces discolouring the carpet, it knows nothing about hoarding, what the flex on the hook is for, why the flat is freezing. That’s all I know about social work. What the AI zealots know or rather hope is that it will potentially save them money. If you don’t count the thousands they’ll spend on tendering and implementation consultants before discovering, just like they have time after time with IT ‘upgrades’, that actually the promise never lives up to the reality. Perhaps social work can reinvent itself as tragicomedy at the end.

I’m not so sure on the whole thing…social work is a human profession and handing over the reins to technology is surely a recipe for disaster. Surely reports and recorded compiled with the use of AI being pulled apart in the legal arena, checked after the use of AI or not. And what for – to speed up throughput to process more consumer units and satisfy the beast of stats and figures? Where is the line going to be drawn between the practitioner’s work and the AI tool? Critical analysis and reasoning starting with the production of case records and reports is crucial. But no, carry on handing over human work to tech companies more than happy to charge LAs for that which can be done with pen, paper and a human mind and heart.