Introduction

Overview

Welcome to the Iriss writing analysis online course. The aim of this course is to provide a practical framework for supporting the writing of analysis in social care records. This course aims to be relevant across social work domains.

This course has grown out of the recording practice project that Iriss has been running over the last two years. This project focussed on supporting social services practitioners to develop their skills and explore their ideas for improving their case recording. In 2019 we partnered with East Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership to look at the current strengths and challenges that social workers were facing in their recording practice. This practice-based research led to a new partnership with Scottish Borders Council social work teams which focused specifically on analysis in recording. Through a series of workshops, we explored practitioners' relationship with analysis and together we looked at how we could support people to improve their written analysis and feel more confident. This course draws on the insights generated from the Iriss project and findings from the WiSP project, a research project exploring professional social work writing.

The aim and learning outcomes of the course

The aim of this course is to provide a practical framework for supporting the writing of analysis in social care records. At the end of the course you will:

1. Have become familiar with one practical framework for supporting the writing of analysis
2. Have considered some aspects of the language of written analysis
3. Have reflected on your own practice of writing analysis

Analysis is central to everyday social work practice and involves paying careful attention to what is going on in any situation in order to understand that situation and make recommendations for support. Analysis can, therefore, be thought of as an ongoing process: The Oxford English Dictionary defines analysis as ‘The action or process of carrying out a detailed examination; the methodical or systematic investigation of something complex in order to explain or understand it.’ Analysis is an ongoing process that social workers are engaged in all of the time.

Analysis is of course also a product, a written record which captures key aspects of all the different parts of the analytic process – the thinking, listening and observing that social workers do. The written record of analysis involves selecting the most important details from all these aspects and writing in a way that makes these understandable to many different kinds of readers. Moving from analysis as process – a part of almost every moment of everyday practice and involving a wide range of professional skills, intuition and expertise – to analysis as a written product is central to the securing of services and providing good care for vulnerable young people and adults. Producing written analysis can also be challenging for many reasons.

How does the course work?

The course has eight units:

1. Thinking about social work writing
2. What do we mean by analysis?
3. Description
4. Explanation
5. Evaluation
6. Recommendation
7. Representing the person’s view
8. Writing as a process that supports analysis