I studied social work between 1976-1980 and one
of the key, enduring skills then taught, was to prepare a customized, written
record based on one’s engagement with people with complex individual and social
needs; in due course, such detailed narratives became important records for
informing case histories, and for use in reviews, case conferences and judicial
processes, as the need arose.
In the decades since completing my
training, I have worked as a social worker, I have also worked with social
workers through my other professional roles, and continue to do so, and because
of various personal matters I had direct relations with about sixteen different
social workers over time. In addition, I lectured to social workers at
University level, including a three-year full-time stint between 2008-11.
Over this period, I have seen a
distinct change in the way in which this recording skill has become framed;
increasingly social workers are taught to abandon the customized narrative in
favour of assessment frameworks that tick-box individual need and circumstance.
There is more focus on pre-established categories than on providing contextual
insights. In effect, new assessment frameworks have designed out personal narrative,
and individual stories stopped getting told, stopped getting heard. While I am
aware that in the past too much focus on individual stories contributed, at
times, to poor assessment, I believe that the essential problem then was the
absence of adequate on-site training, supervision, management and governance,
all of which, we are told, are now remedied. In the new, transformed
arrangement however, the tyranny of cut-and-paste form-filling is taking over!