Thinking about social work writing

What do we know about social work writing?

Your professional writing is an essential part of your communication with the people you are supporting and the other professionals who are working with you to do this. Writing is also the key way in which services are secured and complex decisions made about how best to support vulnerable children and adults. As we know, there is a huge amount of nuance involved in describing what writing, or recording, practice is, what it entails and how it is defined. Broadly, social work recording is any written material about people who are supported by social work services. These records cover a range of content, such as: assessments, reports, case conferences, chronologies, records of visits and more. Written records carry a huge significance in practice because they have a big impact on people’s lives.

To find out more about recording practice, you could explore the summary of findings from an initial scoping review addressing how practice is recorded within social work in Scotland.

Making decisions about exactly what is written, whose views are represented, the language used to describe and analyse situations and lives are fundamentally ethical issues. There is a moral imperative for practitioners to produce written records which are:

• Accurate
• Clearly and fairly include the perspective of the person at the centre of the record
• Clearly and fairly include the perspectives of family, friends and professionals involved with the person at the centre of the record
• Represent the social worker’s professional view
• In line with the general values and ethics of social work and social care practice

While much has been written about social work writing and recording, only a small number of studies have set out to explore exactly what is involved in everyday professional social work writing. WiSP - Writing in professional social work practice in a changing communication landscape - is the first national (England-based) research project on writing in professional social work practice.

This project asked:

• What are the institutional writing demands in contemporary social work?
• What are the writing practices and perspectives of professional social workers?
• What are the challenges faced and solutions found?
• How are writing demands and practices shaping the nature of professional social work?

Through interviews with 70 social workers, researcher observations of 10 weeks of everyday social work practice, 481 days of writing logs kept by social workers and 4,608 texts collected and anonymised – over 1.2 million words of written discourse – they reached a number of key conclusions about social work writing. Some of the findings provide hard evidence for claims that are frequently made.

A considerable amount of time is being spent on writing

Most social workers interviewed said they spend more than 50% of their time on writing but on the basis of observation and logs, considerably more time is spent, with some days involving 90% of time on writing.

Writing takes place in most hours of most days

Often alongside other activities and often outside of official working hours.

Writing is going on across a range of types and technologies

341 institutionally labelled different types of texts were identified.

The large range of writing can be categorised into 11 broad types of writing

Administration, applications for services, assessments, communication with others, contracts/contractual information, case recording, diagrams/mapping, documents when working with clients, meeting-related paperwork, reports, training/supervision documentation).

There are four key genres of writing

Case notes, emails, assessment reports and handwritten notes.

Digital (usually using ICT systems) and handwritten writing (usually in the form of notebooks) are part of everyday practice for different purposes

There are a small number of core words in social work written discourse

128 ‘keywords’. Many of these words relate to description and evaluation.

Key variations in writing are rhetorical

That is the ways in which the text is organised and the language used. For example, there are key variations in relation to VOICE

• Voice – of writer/social worker and how they present themselves including explicit evaluation and analysis
• Voice – how others’ voices are represented in the texts
• Voice – who is being addressed and how.

Adapted from

Theresa Lillis, Maria Leedham, Alison Twiner (2020)‘If it’s not written down it didn’t happen’: Contemporary social work as a writing-intensive profession, Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 14, 1: 29-52. and Theresa Lillis, Maria Leedham, Alison Twiner (2020) Time, the written record and professional practice: the case of contemporary social work, Written Communication, 37, 4: 431-486.

Social workers have many profound concerns about writing

• The amount of time they spend on writing including time outside of official working hours
• The balance of time spent recording compared to time spent with the people they are working with
• The technologies they are required to use – some are not fit for purpose
• The ‘quality’ of their writing – there is often insufficient time for writing in ways they would prefer
• The feeling that the purpose of recording can get lost – that it becomes part of an auditable, monitoring, defensive system – rather than to support vulnerable children and adults
• The challenges around professional view/voice – how the social worker’s voice should be represented alongside other voices in written records.

There was some evidence that social workers are not only carrying out the writing required for social care, but are also mediating services with other agencies

In order to support the people they are working with e.g. in relation to PiP (Personal Independence Payments, with the Department for Work and Pensions).

What makes social work writing so complex?

People become social workers for a range of reasons. A key reason is wanting to practically support people, advocating for their rights, supporting mediation or pursuing social justice. It would be unusual to find a social worker who was drawn to the profession by a love of writing. Yet, writing is often the vehicle through which you are making change for the people you support.

Social work writing is a particularly complex professional activity for a number of reasons. It encompasses not only what might be thought of as technical writing skill, but also the ethics and values of the profession. It has multiple audiences, is completed under time pressure in often challenging circumstances, and it has many forms.Each piece of writing must serve the people you are supporting, your colleagues, and the legal and justice systems that you are working within. In addition there are issues of confidentiality to contend with. Written social care records, furthermore, have a very long life. While they may be written to serve an immediate purpose – to provide a particular service or to secure protection and care for a vulnerable child or adult – they may also be read many years later, for example, by a young person who has experienced the care system. Writing with both immediate and long-term purposes and with multiple audiences in mind makes social work writing a challenging task.

Why focus on analysis?

In our workshops with managers and frontline practitioners we had lots of discussion and reflection around the challenges that came up in social work writing. Some of the aspects that people find most challenging included:

• Risk assessment
• Taking a holistic view
• Being able to analyse large quantities of information
• Linking information to the analysis or decisions made
• Writing clearly and concisely, including structuring of writing
• Proportionate level of detail – not including too much and/or irrelevant detail
• Identifying actions and outcomes (including making SMART plans)
• Presenting an argument, making recommendations
• Writing chronologies

When we reviewed this list with participants and managers, we saw that there was a theme running through these aspects. The workshops highlighted that when approaching recording, and in particular, analytical writing, there are a collection of interrelated skills that need to be in action at the same time – both critical thinking skills and writing skills.

In this course we explore a framework for thinking about analysis that can be applied across any kind of professional writing. The processes explored in the course will help you to think about how to use your writing as a process of analysis and ensure that you are able to centre on the person you are supporting in your writing.

Practical exercise: thinking about writing

Think about a particular person or family you have been working with and all the time spent with them – the interaction you have had with them, face-to-face, on the phone, via whatsapp. Think of everything you have come to know about the person or family and your overall analysis of the situation. What are the key challenges you face in transferring your analysis to a clearly written version of their situation?