Forming a new and unexpected relationship through digital technologies: Lessons for child and family social work

Abstract

This article is not a research paper in the conventional sense. Instead, it is a reflexive account of the building of a relationship which would not have happened without the existence of digital technologies and might not have happened but for the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was through reading a digitised resource (an online PhD thesis) in the first UK ‘lockdown’ that Bob, now a semi-retired academic in the field of adult and organisational learning, began to reappraise his upbringing in a children’s home in Scotland. Meanwhile, it was in getting to know Bob (through emails and Zoom meetings) and by accessing Bob’s retrospectively digitised case record that Viv, the author of the PhD thesis and now a semi-retired social work academic, was stimulated to revisit her early research from a fresh perspective. We argue that our real-life example, serendipitous and unique as it undoubtedly is, demonstrates the democratising potential of the digital transformation that is currently being played out in child and family social work. Furthermore, it seems likely that digital technologies will continue to bring new and unexpected opportunities for forming such relationships in the future.

Stories from Edzell Lodge children’s home in the 1940s and 1950s: lessons for practice and research

“…The stories have been located by their storyteller/collaborator in the wider context of agency records (case files, minute books, annual reports and miscellaneous papers), wider reading and the findings of a PhD completed in 1993 (Cree, 1993). The four authors have been working together over the last two years to co-investigate and co-construct this history, after a connection made during the first COVID-19 pandemic 'lockdown' (see Cree and MacKenzie, 2023a). We now briefly outline the methodological approach we have taken to this co-enquiry (see also Cree and MacKenzie, 2023b).…”