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These digital tools are for people working in social work and social care at every level, including practitioners, supervisors, senior managers, and the wider system.
Developing digital skills is important for effective social work practice. Digital working is central to public sector policy, and necessary for hybrid working. The digital world is already part of daily life for the adults, children and families you support. However, social work practice often focuses too narrowly on digital tools for meetings, emails, and case management. These are the areas that can contribute to heavy workloads and stress.
A broader approach to digital practice, which includes direct work with children and families, will enable social workers to:
Many resources already show how to use digital systems or to improve productivity, but this resource goes further. It helps everyone in social work reflect on their own digital habits and how these inform practice.
Social workers need to improve how to practise social work using digital methods. Some existing skills from in-person practice are transferable, but social workers need some new skills too. These tools help you understand the new skills you need. They will help you work with children and young people to understand their relationship with the digital world and compare it to your own.
Digital changes how you communicate, including how you:
A lack of clear, social care-specific guidance creates uncertainty and anxiety. These tools will help you be more confident about your digital practice. Make sure your organisation has given you permission to do direct work with children and young people digitally. Follow available guidance and discuss problems with your supervisor. To find out more about making decisions about using digital in practice, go to Choosing Digital.
By increasing digital awareness and confidence, you can:
There are three parts:
Using these tools in a group setting creates a deeper, more collaborative learning experience, but they can also be used individually. The first two parts are for anyone working in social care. If you work with adults, these tools will help you understand the digital lives of young adults and young people entering the workforce. These practice tools work best when used to explore different perspectives and connections. Having someone coordinate learning activities in each organisation helps get the most out of them.
People live in different digital worlds and have different digital realities. In children’s social care (CSC), a social worker’s digital world is shaped more by their organisation and administration systems than by children and families.
People working in participation and engagement often use digital tools to engage with children and young people. However, even those digital tools are limited by what the organisation allows or supports.
Practitioners have the weakest digital connection with children. It’s often one-way, with little input from young people to help social workers understand their preferences.
Everyone experiences the digital world differently. Age, culture, background, environment, and even algorithms shape how you interact with technology. These factors create your digital realities which affect:
In adult social care and children’s social care, recognising these differences helps us reflect on how our own digital habits shape the way we engage and communicate with others.
The digital world for young people is complex because it:
It is deeply personal because it:
Understanding how young people use digital spaces helps us to:
Use this digital practice tool to understand a young person’s digital reality.
Understanding how your experience of digital spaces influences the choices you make about using digital methods in practice is important. It helps you:
Children and young people (and people coming into the workforce) have different experiences of digital to many adults, as they have grown up in a digital world.
Use this digital practice tool individually, or as a team exercise, to understand your digital reality.
Social work practice is focused on working with people and developing and sustaining relationships to support change. Relational practice is a well-known practice approach, embedded in many practice frameworks. Some practitioners and supervisors may be concerned that relational approaches may not work well in digital spaces.
Use this digital practice tool on your own, or with your team, to think more about using relational practice in digital spaces.
This framework is for senior leaders and managers to help with strategic planning. Supervisors and practitioners can use this to understand more about team and individual digital practice confidence and competence.
The framework will help you understand how the groups, and the conditions they work in, will impact the outcome.
There are four groups:
There are four conditions:
There is one outcome:
The aim of the framework is to help each group in the system to:
Relational practice is at the heart of social care work. Using digital methods and practice tools does not change this, but new skills need to be developed in how relational practice is used with digital methods. For example, when people are in the same physical space, their brains pick up millions of micro-expressions to understand more about their context. These include things like how they’re feeling or how interested they are in the conversation.
Meeting people online is different because you cannot see these micro-expressions. This means that you need to find different ways of understanding how people feel, such as whether their camera is on or off, or if they’re distracted by emails. Relational practice skills using digital methods are skills that can develop. If you are supervising staff using online meetings, developing these skills is a priority.
Relational practice is an approach used to help improve outcomes for children and adults. When you're using digital approaches, this is influenced by other factors like:
As individuals working in the system, whatever your job role, you influence how well digital practice is used by how you participate, how you develop new skills, and how you promote digital practice to others. To use this framework, think about the different elements of the system from the perspective of each role and consider how well your organisation manages them.