Human Services in the Network Society

Neil Ballantyne, Walter La Mendola

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415690096
• eBook ISBN: 9781317978701
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

The Internet and the many applications it supports continue to transform and expand the ways in which it is possible to relate, communicate, collaborate, and perform human service work. In this book, human service researchers and practitioners explore major opportunities and challenges to well being, social justice, and human service work that technology use in everyday life has exposed. Drawing on the latest research their contributions examine issues associated with human service practices in the network society, including: the implications of an expanded capacity to share human service data across agency and national boundaries; ethical issues associated with the use of remote sensing and surveillance technologies (e.g. the satellite tracking of offenders, and telecare services for older people); the risks and benefits of social network sites including issues associated with online privacy, intimacy, and safety; and the influence of technology-mediated services on human relationships and the sense of 'being present' with another person.

Human Services in the Network Society will be of considerable interest to human service professionals, academics and researchers who are concerned about the social impact of networked technologies.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Technology in Human Services.

Introduction: Human Services in the Network Society

Neil Ballantyne and Walter LaMendola

At the turn of the century, Manuel Castells – the preeminent sociologist of the Internet – argued that, in order to understand the changes associated with the information age that were rapidly diffusing throughout society, a new sociology was required. A sociology based on empirical observation, rigorous theorizing and clear communication about the nature of the emerging network society (Castells, 2010). This new understanding was needed, argued Castells (2000, p693) “…because without understanding, people, rightly, will block change, and we may lose the extraordinary potential of creativity embedded into the values and technologies of the Information Age.”

The chapters that follow are all directly connected to or influenced by an international research symposium held in Glasgow, Scotland, in September 2009. The symposium was hosted by the Institute for Advanced Studies and organized by Connected Practice: a research unit within the Glasgow School of Social Work. The symposium was titled “Human Services in the Network Society,” and its purpose was to provide a focus for an international exchange about the changes, challenges, and opportunities that networked technologies are bringing to the lives of the users of human services and to the practice of human service practitioners. What was innovative about the symposium was not that it brought together human services academics, managers and workers to talk about the implications of information and communications technologies (ICTs), because HUSITA (http://www.husita.org/) and other organizations have been hosting conferences on human services and ICTs for many years. What was new was the explicit focus on networked technologies and the exploration of the emergence of what has been termed the network society for the practice of human service practitioners.

Walter LaMendola (1988) was among the first human service practitioners to document human service activity in what we now call the network society. In 1985 he identified over 300 separate electronic network sites in Denver, Colorado, alone. He classified human service activity in networks at that time into six categories: public service networks, community networks, human service organization networks, professional networks, and client centered networks (p. 240). He concluded by saying that the idea that groups of people can form voluntary communities circumscribed by areas of intellectual, emotional, social, sexual, or political interest is both compelling and real to those who use electronic networks. For the most part, in electronic networking the transformative powers of the technology are usually more vivid and clear than in other implementations of information technology (p. 242).

The concept of the network society as first described by Van Dijk (1991) and elaborated in detail over three volumes by Castells (2000a, 2000b, 2004) argues that the use of electronic networks are fundamentally altering the nature of societies, cultures, and economies in the developed world. They are transforming the ways in which it is possible for humans to relate, communicate, collaborate, conduct trade, and work. In the context of the human services, electronic network use is transforming the ways in which we organize and deliver human services. In fact, they are altering and generating new forms of social life. In turn, this is opening up new channels for expressing social solidarity and, at the same time, opening new opportunities for social disorder.

In the 1990s, when the Internet began to emerge as a significant societal phenomenon, the media and the public became fascinated by its promise to transform society for good or ill. Academic commentators also began to sketch both utopian and dystopian visions of the future of the network society. The utopians described brave new worlds where technology ushered in a new electronic democracy: sweeping aside the traditional boundaries and inequities of sex, class, and race; and empowering individuals to access information and engage in online communities with other netizens from anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, those with a more skeptical view warned of social isolation; the further fragmentation of family and community; and the erosion of privacy, as government, business and criminal interests surveilled and monitored citizen behavior on the net.

Although today we can point to examples in support of both of these views, overall, the empirical evidence suggests that neither was entirely accurate. As Benkler (2006, p357) argues, “while neither view had it completely right, it was the dystopian view that got it especially wrong”. Networked communications and social media are influencing family, community and social life but in complex and subtle ways. For many years the work of Wellman and colleagues associated with Netlab at the University of Toronto, along with the more recent studies conducted as part of the Pew Internet and American Life project, have made a significant contribution to a deeper understanding of how technology is mediating new forms of emerging networked sociality. Wellman (2001) named this pattern “networked individualism.”

According to Wellman, rather than the collapse of community, Internet mediated communications are contributing to the creation of new forms of community of choice, based on personal networks. What is shifting is the reliance on densely knit, tightly bound, traditional communities of place and their replacement (at least for those in developed economies) with personal communities of strong and loose ties. The new forms of community are managed and maintained by a combination of offline face-to-face encounters and online network technologies. Examples of the technologies people use continues to expand and now includes mobile telephony, text messaging, social network sites, e-mail, and instant messaging.

But what are the implications of these changes for the organization and delivery of human services? How can the affordances of networked technology be harnessed for the delivery of human services? And, what are the emerging risks and benefits for human services in the Network Society? In the remainder of this chapter we will touch on just a few of the themes and issues associated with these questions, and at the same time introduce the chapters that follow which will explore a few of the questions in greater depth.

Networked Information

Networked information is an umbrella term referring to the prolific expansion of possible human relationships and actionable knowledge available through participation in Internet and mobile communication services. There has been a steady, well-documented growth of visible networked information; and, at the same time, the growth of undocumented hidden networked information, for example, the hidden web is substantial and has been estimated in size to equal more than 500 times the visible web (Barbosa, 2010). Networked information can take many forms, from one-to-one communications, such as those that dominate most e-mail, to one-to-many communications, such as is typical in social media. Mobile devices and their applications have experienced the same two types of network information development.

Visible uses of network information are dominated by individual communications and searches, mostly through static forms such as websites. Invisible uses include corporate commercial uses as well as protected health and human service information. The hidden web also supports public agency activities and clandestine surveillance. LaMendola, Ballantyne, and Daly (2010) explored practitioner use of networked services in local authorities to build ties among practitioners and increase access to repositories of evidence-based practice. Their experience exposed a number of issues with facilitating individualized network access within institutions located in the hidden human service web.

Mainly, human service organizations are relatively closed systems that are struggling to learn how, and in what manner, they might harness the more open architecture of networked communications. In this volume, Schoech highlights the critical nature of this problem by addressing inter-operability issues intersecting the invisible human service web that – unless dealt with rather immediately – will continue to limit institutional service development; sharing of health and human service information; and, by fiat, the ability of institutional human services to create knowledge based on practitioner wisdom. Schoech argues that like other businesses, there is a growing need for human service agencies to share data across organizational, state, and national boundaries and to increase the extent of interoperability between systems.

Networked technologies have been at the heart of the transformational potential of many 20th century technological innovations including railroads, highways, telephony, and the Internet. In each case the gradual emergence of standards to support effective interoperability, or service integration across the network, has been fundamental. Schoech’s article explores the potential for an interoperable, global human service delivery infrastructure and draws on exemplars from business to explore three possible models for human services interoperability: a loosely linked networked model (based on Web 2.0, cloud computing, and iPhone apps); a network model (based on the highly integrated, real-time information exchange used by industries such as the travel industry); and a top–down model (based on the data-protection concerns of industries like the banking industry). Whether or not human services adopt one or a blend of these models will have far-reaching consequences for the way in which services are delivered, and for the operational ethos of human service organizations.

Although Schoech focuses on information and knowledge sharing within and between human service organizations, networked technologies are also being used by citizens and users of human services to forge their own social support networks, to share information and knowledge, and sometimes to challenge the former monopoly on expertise claimed by human service organizations. Indeed, the first decades of networked information development focused largely on traditions of sharing explicit and codified knowledge, such as libraries or support groups might do. However, the emerging value of networks is now recognized to be their use of sharing tacit knowledge, and of empowering ordinary people through social media. Social media is also being used by not-for-profit organizations to enhance public awareness of social causes and raise funds (e.g. http://summerofsocialgood.com/ and http://www.charitywater.org/). Research has uncovered the ways in which networked technologies can be harnessed in response to natural disasters, such as in Haiti, where US government agencies employed wikis and collaborative social media as the main knowledge discovery and management tools (Yates & Paquette, 2011). And social media has also been used to assist homeless persons find food and shelter (Cary, 2011).

Networked Service Delivery

The focus in human services has grown from dealing with the ways in which electronic networks are influencing and might continue to influence the structure and exchange of information to the impact of networked technologies on forms of service delivery. Human service delivery has encountered the enormous expansion of objects in the social world and the mobility that accompanies it. In many developed countries, service access and utilization is based on the use of cars, smart phones, texting, and Internet services. People leave trails of personal and everyday data behind them without notice. The data is accumulated and aggregated and becomes part of databases which parallel human service databases. People use databases freely themselves, like Twitter or Facebook, not only to portray reactions, experiences, and accomplishments, but also to engage in social support. In such an environment, much of what now constitutes the human service delivery system must respond and facilitate, not direct or command, as meaning is constructed by individual participation in the network and by individualized networking activities. Changes in forms of service delivery are underway.

So far, many human services begin engaging in network services by modeling programs in the format in which they already exist. Internet based services have proliferated for governmental human services, behavioral health services, and services provided by community based organizations. Webb, Joseph, Yardley, and Michie (2010) reviewed web-based behavioral health interventions that sought to affect specific behavioral changes. One of the three major characteristics that contributed to higher effect sizes was “mode of delivery”. However, their coding of this area was constrained by the fact that the mode of delivery was usually not specified clearly. Still, in all cases, the service was networked.

Indeed, most human services in developed countries now also exist in a networked format. Human services are rushing to use forms of social media (Chou, Hunt, Beckjord, Moser, & Hesse, 2009; LaMendola, 2011), gaming (Wilkinson, Ang, & Goh, 2008), and on-line communities (Enos, 2008). Currently, systems are being developed that use the network to assess status and motivation; monitor recovery progress; provide access to self-help meetings, and manage tasks relating to self assessments and goals (VanDeMark, Burrell, LaMendola et al., 2010; Cucciare, Weingardt, & Humphreys, 2009). Studies so far have found significant positive change in areas of mental health assessment, prevention, and treatment (Cuijpers, Donker, van Straten, & Andersson, 2010; Newman, Koif, Przeworski, & Llera, 2010). This is particularly true if the service is supported by a human service worker (Newman, Szkodny, Llera, & Przeworski, 2011).

Included in this volume are three chapters dealing with networked service delivery. One offers a critique of networked services that may diminish relational aspects of the human service while two others offer insights into contrasting but technologically sophisticated domains of human service delivery that have been under-investigated: (a) the electronic monitoring of offenders and (b) telecare services for people with health or disability issues. In each of these domains human service practitioners have come to rely on remote monitoring, sensing, and surveillance: in one case, for the purposes of technologically delivered care; and in the other for the purposes of offender management, community safety, and control.

Nellis describes emerging patterns in the satellite tracking of offenders using systems that go beyond the retrospective monitoring of offenders movements to systems that can track their precise location in “real time.” He directly addresses the ethical implications and changed relationship between supervisors and supervised in this technology-mediated practice. Nellis inexorably draws our attention to the connections between the network society and the surveillance society. While he recognizes the value of a technology that aims to support community safety at the same time as it keeps offenders out of institutions, he also argues that this technology fundamentally alters the relational aspects of probation work with offenders. While there are certainly social benefits to surveillance, Nellis may agree with McCluskey (2005) that in this case “to be reduced to a moving dot on a screen-map, to be watched as a mere simulation is not, as a therapist might put it, ‘to be met as a person.”’

As remote sensing technology has developed for monitoring offenders, parallel systems have also developed in the field of telemedicine and telecare. Telecare services offer the prospect of a technology that enables people with health or disability issues (older people in particular) to remain in their own home supported by remote sensing and communication technologies that alert caregivers to problems or issues. This book includes two chapters exploring telecare in the Scottish context. Andrew Eccles adopts a critical stance, questioning government rationale for a policy commitment to telecare driven, he argues, by fiscal imperatives to contain service costs and improve service delivery efficiencies. In particular he highlights the potential of telecare to reduce fiscal costs by replacing institutional care. At the same time, he notes the increase in human relational costs by reducing human contact and isolating recipients within their own homes. He also urges human service managers and practitioners to reflect on telecare practice using ethical frameworks that are congruent with an “ethic of care” and the relational aspects of human service provision. Ethical issues in the implementation of telecare, he argues, must be considered in their rich, complex, human, and relational context.

In the second chapter on telecare, Beale and colleagues report on an empirical evaluation of the Scottish Government telecare development program. Their findings are broadly supportive of the program, estimating that 1,200 hospital admissions and over 500 delayed discharges from hospital were avoided. Data from the recipients of the service indicated that all felt safer as a result of the program, two thirds felt more independent, and very few felt lonelier. In addition, the informal caregivers of program recipients were very positive about the program and felt reassured by it. They conclude that, their findings, like the findings of prior research, support the view that telecare can “lead to improvements in patients’ perceptions of the quality of care they receive and ultimately their quality of life.” Although this empirical data might seem to provide reassurance on the ethical issues raised by Eccles, the authors are careful to point to the limitations of their research design, and the need to continue to collect data and monitor and evaluate telecare programs if we are to maximize benefits and minimize risks.

Risks and Benefits of the Network Society

Arguably all technical innovations – from the steam engine, to television, to the Internet – are associated with new social benefits, and new social risks. Industrialization brought sweeping societal changes including urbanization, overcrowding, pollution and the most rapid growth in standards of living in human history. The te...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. Introduction: Human Services in the Network Society
• 2. Interoperability and the Future of Human Services
• 3. Eternal Vigilance Inc.: The Satellite Tracking of Offenders in “Real Time”
• 4. Ethical Considerations Around the Implementation of Telecare Technologies
• 5. The Initial Evaluation of the Scottish Telecare Development Program
• 6. Privacy, Social Network Sites, and Social Relations
• 7. Corporate Parenting in the Network Society
• 8. Social Work and Social Presence in an Online World
• Index