Social work on the move: an exploration of physical, imagined and discursive mobilities and sense-making in child protection social work

This research project will explore the way in which mobilities - the movement of people, objects, ideas - interact with the way in which social workers make sense of complex situations in child protection practice to inform their decision-making. The project will expand upon existing child protection research that explores mobilities by including in its focus the movement of ideas as well as movement produced through talk and text.

This is an important area of study because agile working practices are very prevalent in UK child protection social work. Agile working practices involve social workers needing to be increasingly mobile in their practice. They are increasingly expected to work away from the traditional office - working instead at home, in their cars and in shared multi-agency spaces. Social workers therefore spend large parts of their working week physically separate from colleagues and managers and are reliant on information technology to communicate with colleagues as well as recording and ordering information about their practice and the families they work with. The impact of agile working on child protection social work practice and in particular its relationship with the way in which social workers make decisions remains under-examined.

The project will be conducted through a short mobile ethnographic study in a single child protection team in an English local authority. To do this, detailed observations of child protection practitioners undertaking their work will be recorded. These will take place wherever the work does e.g. in cars, homes and different office spaces. Observations will focus on occurrences relevant to decision making such as meetings where key decisions are made as well as interactions with families and other professionals where important information is gathered. Ethnographic data will be subject to thematic qualitative analysis. This will involve detailed examination of the data to identify common themes that draw together decision-making and mobilities in child protection practice.

To supplement the ethnography, approximately 12 semi-structured interviews will be completed with the same practitioners involved in the ethnography. Additionally, approximately 50 excerpts from case recordings of the interactions and meetings observed will be selected. The data from interviews and case recordings will be subjected to a discourse analysis. This will involve an in depth analysis which identifies common uses of language within the text. This will enable an exploration of how language related to mobility, when employed iteratively in specific ways, works to systematically produce particular aspects of child protection practice.

The project will produce key insights into the ways in which social workers experience and account for physical and imagined mobiltiies as a result of agile working practices. This will be used to explore how mobilities which have resulted from agile working practices impact on the ways in which social workers make decisions in child protection practice.

The impact of the study will be to make evidence-based suggestions as to what best practice should look like when organisations are developing their agile working policies. The findings from the study will be submitted to a peer-reviewed international journal. Additionally, the findings will be used to develop a one day training course on agile working and decision-making which will be offered to child protection social workers via the Greater Manchester Social Work Academy, a consortium of ten local authorities and three universities. A summary of this training will be made into a pamphlet which will be disseminated through local and national professional networks.