Information Technology and Evidence-Based Social Work Practice

Judith Dunlop, Michael J. Holosko

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136451553
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Learn to use the latest technological advances in evidence-based social work

Social work practice can be positively or negatively impacted by the advance of technology. Advances and applications must be up-to-date as possible, yet they may be ineffective if not simple enough to easily learn and use. InformationTechnology and Evidence-Based Social Work presents leading social work experts exploring the latest technological advances and the innovative practical applications which can be used effectively in evidence-based social work. Students and practitioners get creative practical advice on how best understand technology and apply it to their work.

Information Technology and Evidence-Based Social Work is divided into four sections. The first section provides the context for understanding the technological link between social work and evidence-based practice. The second section presents examples of how information technology can be used to effectively teach students and practitioners in the field. Section three explores ways to implement technology for use by clients. The fourth section summarizes and then takes a look at the future of technology in evidence-based social work. Chapters include questions for practitioners and for clients to illuminate the current and future issues surrounding technology and evidence-based practice. The text also includes extensive references, and useful tables and figures.

Topics in Information Technology and Evidence-Based Social Work include:

• the impact of technology on social work
  
• computer-assisted evidence-based practice
  
• customized web-based technology and its use in clinical supervision
  
• enhanced technology-based evidence-based practice model and its applicability to large human service organizations.
  
• using information technology to provide evidence for planning and evaluating programs
  
• using technology in advocacy
  
• the geographic information system (GIS) as a useful tool in all aspects of programs and policies
  
• evaluating practice through information technology
  
• the development and evaluation of an online social work service
  
• psychotherapeutic group intervention for family caregivers over the Internet
  
• support group online chat
  
• a case study of how Internet chat group technology can be implemented with cancer survivors
  
• technology as a service learning mechanism for promoting positive youth development in a community-based setting
  
• a model which can be used to collect information and—by using best evidence available—arrive at a confident decision
  
• and more!
  

Information Technology and Evidence-Based Social Work is timely, stimulating reading for educators, undergraduate students, graduate students, and practitioners in the fields of social work, psychology, and public administration.

SECTION I: TECHNOLOGY AND EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE

Information Technology and Social Work–The Dark Side or Light Side?

Rick Csiernik, PhD, RSW

Patricia Furze, MSW, RSW

Laura Dromgole, BSW, MSW (Candidate), RSW

Giselle Marie Rishchynski, BSc, BSW

SUMMARY. The transition from industrial society to information society has had a significant impact upon social work. Benefits emerging have included simplified recording and assessment, electronic advocacy, interactive distance education opportunities and online group work and supervision. However, information technology can also be socially isolating and has led to new social issues including the creation of a false sense of safety, particularly among children and adolescents. Other concerns include the increased pace of work, the role of e-counselling and the emergence of a technologically inspired generation gap between new and established workers. Three focus groups, comprised of new BSW candidates, experienced part-time MSW candidates and field practice educators, were held to explore these issues. Themes generated included concerns regarding confidentiality, workload, and the compromising of basic social work practice and the therapeutic relationship. However, technology was also seen as having the potential to support geographically isolated clients and those with disabilities as well as providing another mechanism to connect with adolescents. Technology is ideology and while its advance is inevitable, social workers need to maintain a healthy scepticism while avoiding both unhealthy enthusiasm and unnecessary resistance, as technology will continue to create both challenges and opportunities for the profession. doi:10.1300/J394v03n03_02 [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: [email protected] Website: http://www.HaworthPress.com© 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Information society, technology, technological risks, limitations and benefits

Social work is the art of self. Social work is what we bring to, whatever we have, our ability, our skill. It is through the relationship, that invisible thing that happens between two people that change happens–we could lose that with technology.

–Association of Social Work Field Practice Educators (2004)

INTRODUCTION

In the 19th century North American society began to move out of the agrarian age and into the age of machines. The industrial revolution was the antecedent for worldwide change including the need for and development of the profession of social work. At the end of the 20th century a second great societal transformation had begun to gain momentum and as a result, we have been witness to the beginnings of the transition from industrial society to information society in the developed and developing worlds. This transition has immense implications for the profession as the dawn of the information age has brought great benefits to social work including:

• accessing information quickly through the Internet (Geraty, 2004; Giffords, 1998),

• more simplified recording (Ames, 1999) and assessment (Nurius & Hudson, 1988),

• electronic advocacy (Fitzgerald & McNutt, 1999; McNutt, 2002),

• interactive distance education for isolated and working students and social workers (Knowles, 2002; McCarty & Clancy, 2002; Thurston & Cauble, 1999), and similarly

• online group work (Finn, 1999; Galinksy, Schopler & Abell, 1997; Pleace, Burrows, Loader, Muncer & Nettleton, 2003; Schopler, Abell & Galinksy, 1998),

• supervision (Stofle & Hamilton, 1998; Suler, 2000), and

• e-counselling and e-therapy (Grohol, 1997, 1999; Stofle, 1997).

However, there is also a dark side to this increasingly prominent information technology, one for which caution needs to be exercised and prudence exhibited. For just as industrialization brought great benefits, it also brought forth great disparities, inequalities, social injustices and oppression. Technology is ideology. It is a tool that supports the production of knowledge and the development of skills and thus it also has significant values implications (Cwikel & Cnaan, 1991; Kreuger & Stretch, 2000). To be unaware of the implications of adopting and integrating new technologies into a profession that continues to struggle with the concept of evidence-based practice is not only naïve but verges on negligence. Thus, it is acknowledged that information technology is a reality of contemporary social work practice and that its influence will continue to grow. This fact, however, necessitates that as a profession we adopt a critical appraisal of the implications of this new practice tool.

This article provides an overview of pertinent issues practitioners need to consider as information technology becomes more ingrained in social work. This is particularly relevant as digital immigrants (those of us who initially learned to type and tabulate rather than word process and Excel our documents) are challenged by the views of digital natives (those for whom burning a CD and taking a picture with a digital phone is as routine as is conducting a psychosocial assessment). An examination of the different perspectives of digital immigrant and digital native social workers regarding information technology is also provided illustrating the distinct issues beginning, and established practitioners have concerning, this encroaching technology.

Practice Issues

The practice of social work is about the interface of people, their families and their communities. Social workers are agents of social control but we also promote social welfare and social change to empower the individual, the group and the community. As a result we regularly work with disadvantaged, disenfranchised and oppressed populations (Armitage, 1996). Endemic to our work is the question: how can we reduce or ameliorate the social condition of isolation and enhance individuals’ connectedness with one another? Four prominent factors that promote change for individuals are: positive regard, therapist accurate empathy, therapist genuineness and the depth of patient self-exploration (Carkhuffe & Truax, 1965). Thus, a key practice question to ascertain is: does information technology advancement promote these factors or rather does it further disempower individuals?

As social workers we are aware that how we communicate influences the degree of isolation or connectedness clients perceive. We know that there are several components of communication of which the written text is but one small fraction. The other components include the tone of voice, body language, facial expression and its congruence or lack of congruence. Information technology, as a result, has attempted to bring these components to individuals through web cams, voice technologies, emoticons for e-mail and netiquette (i.e., the rules of online communication) with varying degrees of success. This has all been done in an attempt to simulate direct person-to-person and to some degree face-to-face contact (Robson & Robson, 1998; Stofle, 1998).

In promoting change, the issue of genuineness or self-congruence means that the better connected or more isolated the social worker, the more or less the social worker may promote or assist the individual to connect with him/herself and others. Therefore, the more isolated social workers become, the less capable we are of reducing alienation and promoting connections. The energetic “felt sense” of communication can become a disengaged sense of the other leading to a further sense of isolation and alienation. Information technologies can create and enhance isolation for individuals who are often alone, sitting, focused on a computer screen for long periods of time, and who frequently lose sense of time as occurs with gamblers in casinos that provide no indication of day or night. A false sense of confidentiality and privacy is also created and it can readily reduce the amount of physical activity in which an individual engages (Gendlin, 1981).

The pace of society in the information age has sped up dramatically. Technologies have played a part in giving us easy access to one another through fax, e-mail, cell phones, chat rooms and online messaging. However, what has the potential to bring us together also leads to isolation and greater interpersonal separation. The speed of technology creates the lure of immediate gratification and the pressure to communicate more quickly and perhaps more often with larger numbers of individuals. However, the quantity of interactions seems to be replacing and displacing depth and quality.

The energetic felt sense of the relationship that develops can also be distorted through these new technologies. Web cams and video teleconferencing, which have been developed to allow individuals visual access to one another to assist in communication, are still distorting. In clinical practice during the 1980s one-way mirrors were used with individuals and families to allow for interdisciplinary and team participation in assessments and training. It was discovered that even though the team observing was as little as three to five feet away behind the mirror from the individuals being observed, the social worker in the room with the client had a qualitatively different experience from the observers regardless of the number of cameras used or angles employed. As a result, when providing team feedback to the client, the social worker physically present in the room was the one whose assessment was given priority over the observers. Technologies, by their very essence, are intermediaries in the exchange between individuals. The camera lens and mirrors allowed for objectification, sometimes clarity, but not necessarily understanding or accurate empathy. These aspects of the process were best gained by the social worker in the room, energetically. Likewise, web cams that are gaining increased prominence can objectify and distance the individual from others rather than enhancing connectedness.

Television and computer technologies are very powerful focusing agents. Even highly distractible clinical populations such as children presenting with attention issues are able to focus for long periods of time at a computer. Likewise, television, gaming and computer softwares are designed to focus and sustain attention. As a consequence we are being trained to expect to sit passively and be entertained. The practice fallout is that increasing numbers of parents are expressing concerns with issues of obesity and reduced level of activity in their children as their children are spending less time interacting with their peers in sports and imaginative, unstructured play. Many times, information technologies are used to entertain children who are more passively involved. What becomes reduced is the physical interaction of the body, essential in both learning and in incorporating learning. These individuals have fewer requirements to internally develop the skills of patience, self-control and the self-discipline needed to manage the state of boredom, which is not an infrequent occurrence in life. In social work practice large numbers of children are seen who have not developed these skills internally. These children seek external ways to provide themselves with the “quick fix” that will reduce boredom. Information and electronic technologies provide the “quick fix” but increased dependency on an external source for what needs to be developed internally leaves children at risk for developing unhealthy coping strategies. These can manifest themselves through alcohol and other psychoactive drug addiction, impulse control disorders, such as problem gambling or eating disorders, or through compulsive sexual behaviour.

Sex and money are often related to power and disenfranchised individuals often struggle with access to finances and abuses of power, which readily occur in the area of human sexuality. Conditions involved in the information technology domain create the opportunity for abuses in these areas to flourish. In practice over the last five years, an increasing vulnerability of children to sexual predators via chat rooms has been witnessed (Relph & Webb, 2003). In chat rooms, pseudo-intimacy can develop. Children can be more easily deceived, as one of the fundamental aspects of in-person communication is the congruence or lack of congruence between the verbal message and the non-verbal message. Transparency in our relationships allows us to make use of our intuitive feelings and instincts to uncover deceit or dishonesty. With technology mediating transparency, sexual predators have easier access to a child within the confines of what feels like a safe, private place. Many parents present concerns over their children, both boys and girls, being enticed into posting their photos, often sexualized, on the Internet, and/or disclosing their personal details such as address and full name, all of which allows for easier access by the predator. A risk also exists of being drawn into using web cams to send nude images or simply being exposed to language and thoughts used in chat rooms which are personally and sexually degrading. These experiences are hardly new to society, however, the number of children and young adolescents involved and the ease at which they can become involved have increased dramatically as a result of information technologies. Likewise in practice we also see teens and preteens agreeing to meet their chat room “friends” and making plans to travel, sometimes out of the country, with individuals who they have never met in person.

There are ongoing efforts by police and legal authorities to create safety on the Internet and yet pop-ups of, and ...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• About the Editors
• Introduction
• Section I: Technology and Evidence-Based Practice
• Section II: Educational Implications
• Section III: Implementing Evidence-Based Technology for Clients
• SECTION IV: SUMMARY
• Index