Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories: the “problem” with case notes in contemporary social work

Abstract

Drawing on a text-oriented action research ethnography of the writing practices of UK-based social workers, this paper focuses on a key but problematic aspect of everyday, professional textual practice – the production of “case notes.” Using data drawn from interviews, workshops, texts and observation, the paper locates case notes within social work everyday practice and explores the entextualization of three distinct case notes. The heuristic of

Time, the Written Record, and Professional Practice: The Case of Contemporary Social Work

“…The production of texts is mediated by a range of writing technologies, from conventional pen and paper (in notebooks and Post-it notes) to digital technologies, such as the use of large ICT systems and texting via mobile phones. The baseline characterization evidences the sheer amount and range of writing/texts constituting social work practice, signaling that social work writing is de facto a "writing-intensive" profession (Lillis et al, 2017, after Brandt, 2005. The key focus in this article is an exploration of time in relation to such writing intensiveness.…”

“…Case Study 3 illustrates a further strand of text work that social workers often carry out, in this case relating to housing. Such text work has an institutionally contested position as it is outside of the social work ICT system and not required, legally or institutionally, but is clearly considered an essential dimension to social work practice (for another example, see Lillis et al, 2017Lillis et al, /2020.…”

“…Studies in the field can be characterized as being driven by three, interrelated imperatives: academic —to generate empirical data and theorizations of what it means to write in different professional domains, with some studies orienting more specifically to characterizing texts (e.g., Bhatia, 1993), some practices (e.g., Bezemer & Kress, 2017), and some explicitly seeking to theorize the relationship between both (e.g., Berkenkotter & Hanganu-Bresch, 2011); pedagogic/interventionist —to build accounts of literacy practices based on empirical data and literacy theory to inform the design of professionally oriented courses or training programs or to resolve literacy-related problems in professional practice (signaled explicitly in some studies, e.g., Freedman et al, 1994); professional —to explore clusters of literacy-related issues in response to explicit professional requests (e.g., Lillis, 2017; Schryer, 2002). While varying in scale, scope and approach, what the studies share is a commitment to bringing to bear methodologies and theories from literacy/writing studies to the articulation of literacy-related phenomena and problematics in professional domains.…”

The activity does not archive well: comparing audio and written records of supervision case discussions in Children’s Services

“…Social work records are thought to be particularly important for children in care (Department for Education, 2010, p36 -38). As described by one adult who was in care as a child, "It's hard to understand the impact of being presented with a folder containing details about your life from the age of eight weeks, in my case, to 18. The whole exercise was very emotional and quite disorientating" (Williams, 2014, unpaginated).…”

“…We do so by comparing audio recordings of supervision case discussions with what is subsequently (or concurrently) written down on the child's file. Other studies of social work record keeping have tended to focus on the record itself, how it is constructed, what it includes (or does not include) and the different types of writing that social workers produce (Lillis andRai, 2011, Hall et al, 2006). One noteworthy empirical study is that of Lillis (2017) who observed social workers (in adult services) as they produced their records, as well as interviewing them about the process of producing records.…”