Q: Has the digitisation of Social Work created the conditions for an institutionalised shame or grandiosity, as the polarised metric-ends, of a narcissistic narrative ?

the other glaring omission is a much harder ask for discussion, although runs through most of the threads covered by CC; State services are inherently also CofE and colonial, the latent value base of which is the unconscious bias written into much of the concealed algorithmic design ~ the rest is an aesthetic purporting the espousal of social work values and the reality speaks to something very different…

Does anyone remember Still Bridging Bridges? Well, like ‘Working Together” it has now morphed into the latest version of some IT kit or other.

The most recent coverage of which emerged from the use of Profilers for Adhd and Autism.

The use of words like relational to most of us means literally the real world demands/risks posed by self and others of somebody who one actually know, obviously right?

Wrong: relational in IT speak is the computational significance of a correlation between how the data subject responds to a computational metric system and, then, how this relates to a background algorithm rating of risk based on the super language model is use.

It has nothing to do with the real relationships at all. For sure, they can be useful proxy but it is only a proxy.

It is though huge and lucrative business.

The talk of increasing bureaucratic burden is in fact, I suggest, directly derived from the poor design of the IT architecture ~ digitisation and interoperability has failed and failed miserably for the past two decades if not longer.

IT procurement is a nightmare and long known for the accummulative nature of error production ~ called ontic quales.

Think ‘Horizon’ and ask how many times people in need of help are poorly served because the computer generated pictures say so.

The scale of this ‘legacy’ and blunder across all NHS and Social Services is yet to be told.

SWE, are sewn-in to the problem creation with very little say so on the actual impact at Local Authority level.

For more on this see Sha Xin Wei, Navigating Indeterminacy.

If, Every Child Matters, then the processes of measuring them, like all other vulnerable populations, Matters Too ~ Quality Protects was meant to help, did it?

I just rummaged through some old work with Patrick Hoverstadt, of Fractal Consulting Ltd, and it strikes me that there’s a glaring omission in the story being told of our application of theory to practice ~ the term parallel planning is seated entirely upon a Bayesian Model of risk determination, and the term parallel planning derived from such thinking; Where’s the commentary on the ‘how’ of decision making? If social work seeks the moral highroad on issues of trust then let’s have a proper conversation about it.

I agree Christian but what also of Hilary Searing, The Barefoot Social Worker? And, really, on the question of mandatory reporting, as recommended by iicsa, there are countless pioneering leaders who too failed to act and they too know it.Indeed, one could write dialectically about how Social Work has arrived at it’s position today because of such matters; I dare you 😉

Community Care may have forgotten to mention that, aside from being awarded an outstanding contribution award at the corporately-sponsored Social Work Awards nine years ago(!), June was more recently given a lifetime achievement award by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) at its 2023 conference and AGM, proposed and voted for by BASW members, as is fitting for a social worker of such reputation and standing: https://new.basw.co.uk/articles/june-thoburn-david-n-jones-receive-lifetime-achievement-awards-basw-agm