Who's leading our profession in the digital age?

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 27 February, 2023

Tommy Henderson-Reay says he often feels like a lone voice and on a mission to bring technology into the core of social worker’s thinking.

He is that rare beast in social work – a social worker who is not only techno-savvy, but practically evangelical about its power to transform the profession. Currently working with NHS England on a programme to boost uptake of digital technology in social care, he has an urgent message for social workers: technology must be part of the conversation.

“If I am totally honest when I talk to people I know who are social workers, they don’t really get what I am talking about. Who I work for doesn’t make sense to most social workers. But I am adamant that what we are talking about is absolutely front and centre of what the profession should be about.

“I am not saying everyone should be a technologist. But what I am saying is that increasingly as a profession we need to have a more detailed conversation around the realms of technology.

“If we think about the people we are caring for, their use and awareness and connection with technology, is moving at a rapid rate. But our profession’s literacy around technology is not. So are we in danger of becoming obsolete because we are not able to keep up? It is a question.”

Perhaps one of the reasons why social work lags behind in the technology field is that those who enter the profession are more motivated by people than machines.

The Covid pandemic, however, showed how important technology has become in social care as a means of communicating with people, says Tommy.

“The pandemic hit people without warning and if you look at the learning that came out of it, we found local authorities were woefully inadequate with the technology they were using so safeguarding cases went through the roof.

“The training to recognise and assess risk and to be person-centred over a screen as opposed to face-to-face, the best practice guidance on how to do that, was often missing because technological uses for assessments weren’t at the forefront of our minds. As a result our responses have been reactive - we’re essentially playing catch up.”

Understanding how technology can be used to enhance people’s lives should be part of the social worker’s toolkit and used in assessments, says Tommy.

“Social workers are a trusted point of advice and guidance for people. When you go into someone’s home do social workers think about what technology might be best placed there? In most cases probably not but there is good and bad technology to use so maybe we should.”

“A social worker might think, ‘What agencies are offering care and support that might alleviate one’s situation’, for example. The same principle applies to what technology is appropriate, safe, and proportionate for a person to use. Does the tech suit the person and their needs in the same way we would think about referring an agency for additional support or care.”

Equally important in the digital age is having an understanding of the ethical and safeguarding issues around social media, says Tommy.

“How au fait are social workers around the ethics of social media and sharing information and what is safe and what is good practice, either in their own personal life or with younger people? We’re probably better than we were but its part of the wider conversation.

“I used to work with 18 and 19-year-olds with learning disabilities who were really vulnerable. They were using dating apps, and you think, what is a safe app?[THR1]  What information are they sharing? Who can see this info? Does this app leave them vulnerable to exploitation or coercion? For me this is absolutely within the remit of a social worker’s role.

“I was working it out on the fly - there was nothing to tell me what is good practice working with people with learning disabilities using dating apps.

“It’s a niche example but it illustrates a stark point: we are behind the times.”

Tommy believes the case for having techno-savvy social workers is clear across all client groups. He understands concerns of technology being used to replace the human connections at the core of social work. His answer, however, is not to ignore technology but to train social workers to be “digital critical”.

“Technology is the means to the end of better care. A technologically confident social worker would look at something and go, ‘Is technology going to help this situation, is it going to work, and if not, you don’t use it.

“You become critical because you become confident in what would and wouldn’t work rather than using it as a default.”

Tommy believes social work education is behind the curve in creating techno-savvy social workers. He is disappointed that regulator Social Work England’s readiness to practice consultation on what students leaving initial training should know contains “contains very limited reference or substance around technology at all”.

As well as putting social work at risk of getting left behind in the use of technology to help people “tell their story”, it’s also putting social work itself at risk, he says.

“If you ask social workers what they think of the computer system they work with they say it doesn’t always work for them and is not intuitive to the way we do social work.

“How you complete an assessment is shaped by the system you are inputting into rather than the person centred way in which you should be viewing it.

“That’s because a) it is not a given that social workers know about user-centred design and the intuitive design of a software system b) we don’t have social work technology leads in national roles within the departments for education and health and social care cautioning against what social work academics call the ‘electronic turn’ promoting the idea of being digitally critical c) there is a strong sense of ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’, so who are the leaders advocating for systems designed in the way that reflects good social work practice?

“As a result there’s a sense of powerlessness, not knowing what to say, not having the capacity to do anything about it all while technology develops at a rapid rate. Finding the balance between not leaving people behind and moving with the times is really hard.”

Tommy is calling for social work as a profession to lead the technology agenda itself so it is not “duped by shiny salesmen in cheap suits”.

He says: “If you work for the independent care sector, the trade bodies that represent care providers all have digital leads articulating, collating and advocating their members’ views - producing guidance around technology and feeding good practice into department for health and social care around technology. Do we have a reciprocal relationship for social workers? No.

“At the moment it is not social workers steering the conversation around that. But if I have learned anything from working in policy it is that policy is often triggered by whatever sector it is banging a drum and telling policy to change.

“If you haven’t got the bottom up – ie social workers telling policy to change – then guess what, policy won’t be pro-active.

“We don’t bang the drum and government don’t steer it either. So who is steering the conversation? It ends up being the tech suppliers who are ultimately profit-driven, however philanthropic they claim to be, they are not bound by a core set of ethics and codes of practice in the way social workers are – that is the key.”

So how does social work take control? Tommy believes the answer is to provide a home for people within the profession who are interested in tech where best practice and thinking can be shared.

“They are out there, but we don’t have a mechanism to capture them,” he says.

This could be in the shape of regional bodies linked to a national steering group which can then feed into government policy, believes Tommy.

Ultimately, he says, it’s up to the social work profession to take charge of its digital destiny.

“I worked as a frontline social worker in local authorities for five years before moving into this world.

“I worked in hospital discharge and the inability to share information was just so frustrating. I thought, ‘Do I become a bitter and twisted social worker frustrated by the lack of data sharing arrangements, seeing people often in crisis suffer as a result, or do I try and find an avenue to do something about it?”

Tommy Henderson-Reay works as part of NHS England’s Digitising Social Care Programme. He will be hosting a webinar on 22nd March 11 – 12.15 titled ‘The digital social worker of 2023’ with the Chief Social Worker for Adults, Lyn Romeo. Register your interest here