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

该研究项目将探讨流动性-人，物体，思想的运动-与社会工作者在儿童保护实践中理解复杂情况的方式相互作用的方式，以告知他们的决策。该项目将扩大现有的儿童保护研究，探索流动性，包括在其重点思想的运动，以及通过谈话和文本产生的运动。这是一个重要的研究领域，因为敏捷的工作实践是非常普遍的英国儿童保护社会工作。敏捷工作实践涉及社会工作者，他们需要在实践中越来越多地移动的。人们越来越希望他们离开传统的办公室，在家里、在汽车里或在多机构共享的空间里工作。因此，社会工作者每周工作的大部分时间与同事和管理人员分开，依靠信息技术与同事沟通，并记录和订购有关他们的做法和他们工作的家庭的信息。敏捷工作对儿童保护社会工作实践的影响，特别是其与社会工作者决策方式的关系，仍然没有得到充分审查。该项目将通过在英国地方当局的一个儿童保护小组中进行简短的移动的人种学研究来进行。为此，将记录从事儿童保护工作者的详细观察结果。这些将发生在任何地方的工作，例如在汽车，家庭和不同的办公空间。观察将侧重于与决策相关的事件，例如做出关键决定的会议以及与家庭和其他专业人员的互动，收集重要信息。人种学数据将进行专题定性分析。这将涉及对数据进行详细审查，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，为补充人种志，将与参与人种志的相同从业人员进行大约12次半结构化访谈。此外，还将从所观察到的互动和会议的案例记录中选出大约50个摘录。访谈和个案录音的数据将进行语篇分析。这将涉及深入分析，确定文本中语言的常见用法。这将有助于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。该项目将产生关键的见解，社会工作者的经验和帐户的物理和想象的mobiltiies作为敏捷工作实践的结果的方式。这将被用来探讨如何流动性，导致敏捷的工作实践的影响，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，说明组织在制定敏捷工作政策时应该采取什么样的最佳实践。该研究的结果将提交给同行评审的国际期刊。此外，调查结果将用于开发为期一天的敏捷工作和决策培训课程，该课程将通过大曼彻斯特社会工作学院向儿童保护社会工作者提供，该学院是由十个地方当局和三所大学组成的联盟。将把这次培训的摘要编成小册子，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.