Social services, social work, and information management: Some european perspectives

Abstract

Social services are entering the information society. Over the past decades, information technology applications have slowly permeated service agencies. Although originally the domain of administrative and management staff, now core operational staff are also confronted with making increased use of technology. The way information management in human services is shaped is not only dependent upon technology, but increasingly seems to result from an interaction between social policy developments and information technology opportunities. Similarly, social policy developments are shaped by the existing information manage ment infrastructure. One of the purposes of this paper is to explore-taking social services and social work as the exemplar, and mainly drawing upon experiences from the UK and the Netherlands-the relationship between new technology and the policy environment. We also reflect on whether or not this relationship is more complex than indicated by globalization and related post-fordist theories.

E-social work: an empirical analysis of the professional blogosphere in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy

“…As a result of the increasing addition of New Management approach to the sphere of social services (Steyaert and Gould, 1999;Langan, 2000;Jordan and Jordan, 2000), the professional practice and provision of welfare services relationships, have been affected by information and communication technologies (Humphries and Camilleri, 2002, Harlow, 2003, Webb, 2003, Garrett, 2005, Rafferty and Steyaert, 2007, Harris and White, 2009and Coleman, 2011, in ways not without controversy (Sapey, 1997;Garret, 2005;Dustin, 2008;Ferguson, 2008;Harris and White, 2009), giving rise to new characterisations of social work such as 'Liquid Social Work' (Ferguson, 2008) or 'The McDonaldization of Social Work' (Dustin, 2008). In any case, a new approach or perspective of social work called E-Social Work is emerging, of which the virtual community thematic of social work bloggers, constitutes one of its de facto manifestations.…”

What Happens When Digital Information Systems Are Brought Into Health and Social Care? Comparing Approaches to Social Policy in England and Australia

“…Client indexes began to appear in the 1970s, and specialist ‘stand alone’ databases were developed for specific services in the 1980s. From the late 1980s, individual and local projects explored the support of frontline practice in both health and social care to varying degrees, and learning could be found by reference to similar projects undertaken in the USA (McCoy and Vila, 2002) and in Europe (Steyaert and Gould, 1999; Haux et al ., 2002).…”