New writing project: social media in social work practice

What can social media do for social work practice? What are the individual, organisational challenges and opportunities? How does social media contribute to or interfere with/disrupt practice with vulnerable service users? How can we facilitate greater awareness of social media and digital skills required to utilise it amongst people we work with?

Exciting news this week as I have had my latest book proposal accepted by Sage. The book project stems from several pieces of work I have been involved in during the last couple of years with academic colleagues, practitioners and service users and is designed to illustrate the potential of using social media in social work practice, and will discuss  the risks governance and accountability issues which need to be identified and explored as new technologies become commonplace in our lives.

The book will help student social workers to think about the ethical and practical issues which arise from using social media, and will provide case studies and activities which they can engage with to extend and deepen their knowledge.

I will be blogging regularly about this writing project as it develops. It would be really helpful to get practitioner perspectives and feedback from social work students as to the accessibility of the writing and what they gain from engaging with the materials in the book. If you are a student social worker who would like to join this project, or a practitioner using social media you can contact me here. The publishers have agreed that reviewers can receive a free copy of the book when it is published.










 
 

 

News on developments in social media in social work practice.

I've been working on a few projects associated with social media in practice recently. Some progress has been made on developing and piloting an App with service users who can give instant feedback on their experience of using social services. Along with colleagues across the U.K. we are testing the App out with social workers, to find out how they are using it. Another project is looking at updating several Apps to make them more relevant to the UK context of social work and practice with children, young people and their families/carers.

There's a few more projects bubbling away which I will be starting in the coming weeks, so I'll post further details once plans are firmed up. Watch this space.

An appetite for social media #LOAM14

It was a pleasure to meet some fantastic enthusiastic practitioners from across England and Wales last week at the Research in Practice event in Warwick which was focused on Social Media in Social Work Practice. The ideas that people came up with will really take practice to another level promoting transparency, gaining service user input and making huge strides to involve service users and develop partnerships. There were some really interesting ideas for taking social media forward in CPD activities discussed in the workshops and I am keen to hear back from those practitioners about their progress and success, as well as about the pitfalls and barriers they experience. We can all learn from each other about how to develop social work services and how to keep people safe and  how to try out new ideas for engaging service users, recruiting foster carers and gathering feedback and how to test out services which  use social media platforms and digital technologies. Watch this space for progress reports!

Here we go again! #smswp #LOAM14

In the last few months as well as launching and  promoting Social Media in Social Work Education (http://criticalpublishing.com/index.php/browse-by-subject-1/social-work/social-media-in-social-work-education.html ), my attention has turned to social media in social work practice.


There are a few examples  of communicating and working  in social work which draw on social media, but not many and my view is that the social work profession does need to play catch up. I have written about this in relation to practice education in  a chapter for a forthcoming publication: Social media in social work practice education in (eds.) Bellinger, A., and Ford, D. Practice placement in social work: Innovative approaches for effective teaching and learning. Policy Press, which is due to be published in 2015.


I am going to be discussing some of the opportunities which social media does present for social work practice at a Research In Practice (https://www.rip.org.uk/) event later this week. I think there is already plenty of narrative out there about the risks and dangers of social media, and so in my sessions I hope to encourage and support agencies and  practitioners to try out new ideas for engaging and working with service users, peers and other agencies and organisations.


There are pockets of good practice and the potential for more. I hope that I can share a few of these and generate interest from agencies and practitioners who wish to try out their ideas. You can follow the  discussions at the conference using #LOAM14.