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

这项研究项目将探讨流动--人员、物体、思想的流动--如何与社会工作者理解儿童保护实践中的复杂情况，为他们的决策提供信息的方式相互作用。该项目将在现有儿童保护研究的基础上，通过将思想的移动以及通过谈话和文本产生的移动纳入其重点来探索流动性。这是一个重要的研究领域，因为灵活的工作实践在英国儿童保护社会工作中非常普遍。灵活的工作实践涉及社会工作者在实践中需要更多地移动。人们越来越多地期望他们远离传统的办公室--在家里、在车里和共享的多机构空间里工作。因此，社会工作者每周有很大一部分时间与同事和管理人员分开，依靠信息技术与同事交流，并记录和订购有关他们的做法和与之共事的家庭的信息。敏捷工作对儿童保护社会工作实践的影响，特别是它与社会工作者决策方式的关系仍在审查之中。该项目将在英国地方当局的一个儿童保护小组中进行一项简短的流动人种学研究。为此，将记录儿童保护从业者开展工作的详细观察结果。这些将在工作进行的任何地方进行，例如在汽车、家庭和不同的办公空间。观察将侧重于与决策有关的事件，如作出关键决定的会议，以及收集重要信息的家庭和其他专业人员的互动。将对人种学数据进行专题性定性分析。这将涉及对数据的详细审查，以确定将儿童保护实践中的决策和流动性结合在一起的共同主题。为了补充人种学，将对参与人种学的相同从业人员进行大约12次半结构化访谈。此外，将从观察到的互动和会议的案例记录中挑选约50个节选。访谈和案例记录的数据将进行语篇分析。这将涉及一项深入的分析，以确定文本中常见的语言用法。这将使我们能够探索与流动性有关的语言在以特定方式反复使用时如何系统地产生儿童保护做法的特定方面。该项目将产生对社会工作者体验和解释由于灵活的工作实践而产生的物理和想象的流动性的方式的关键见解。这将被用来探讨灵活工作实践所产生的流动性如何影响社会工作者在儿童保护实践中作出决定的方式。这项研究的影响将是提出基于证据的建议，说明当组织正在制定其敏捷工作策略时，最佳实践应该是什么样子。这项研究的结果将提交给一份同行评议的国际期刊。此外，研究结果将被用来开发一个关于敏捷工作和决策的为期一天的培训课程，该课程将通过大曼彻斯特社会工作学院、一个由十个地方当局和三所大学组成的财团向儿童保护社会工作者提供。培训摘要将编成小册子，通过地方和国家专业网络散发。

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.