Whatever happened to the protest and the rage?

Whatever happened to the protest and the rage?

Yesterday’s teaching for our new level 1 student’s focussed on technology.  I was developing with the students the theme of how social media can contribute to social work practice. In doing so I was encouraging them to discover and follow blogs written by social workers. This idea seemed to go down well, perhaps because it allows an insight into the profession and let’s people training to be social workers see what being a social worker is actually like. This was what I wanted to achieve, to allow students the chance to look in and interact with professionals.

Today it is ethics and values. We are introducing the concept of traditional and emancipatory values and we will spend the best part of this academic year exploring this topic with students. Our aim is at least in part to allow students the opportunity to locate themselves and their own value base and link it to the concept of values and ethics. I see a real link between these two subjects and if students take my advice and follow a social work blog they should be able to develop links using social media as a platform to develop their learning. If they do I will be very pleased. Social media is a wonderful platform for this type of activity and it is readily accessible for all of our students.

Reflecting on social media’s role I feel that perhaps we have some way to go to establish our own ethical approach to social media and its potential uses. Last night I engaged in a brief but interesting twitter debate discussing the role of managerialism in direct payments and in community care in general. We were expressing some concern that the initial laudable idea of direct payments was becoming entangled in an increasingly bureaucratic process that was in turn influenced by the registration and inspection process.

Interesting debate? Yes, but also risky. More risky for some than others. I do not work for a local authority so it is unlikely there would be any come back for me. Other’s did. Perhaps the local authorities would be happy for staff to engage in such a debate and would be interested in their opinions and views. Perhaps also they would be willing to take on some of the criticisms to look at how they needed to alter or change their approach. I hope they would be but I suspect that their (at least initial) reaction would not be so welcoming

I imagine they would be concerned over the public nature of such a debate, over the risk of a compromise of their identity or indeed a risk that service users would be identifiable. All of these concerns would be fair and reasonable and I hope they would be carefully considered before a response was given. Social media is ideal for such debates, anonymity is in this sense helpful in allowing the debate to flourish. My worry is that a lot of local authorities and indeed other organisations have not arrived at a definitive position on the use of social media in engaging in critical analysis of service provision and delivery. It is then likely that their immediate reaction would be defensive and would place staff that use social media in a risky position.

Surely a profession such as social work would see the value in social media for engaging in debate? I would hope so but there are factors that mitigate against this. I do not think I am alone in feeling that the regulation and inspection of services has in some cases stifled creativity and imagination. As has the financial retrenchment that organisations have experienced, there is a prevailing culture of risk aversion in organisations. This mixed with the (valid) concerns over possible compromises in confidentiality is a challenge for organisations.

Social media is a valuable tool that fits well with the ethical background and values bases of our profession we need to embrace it and develop its use.

This blog entry is dedicated to Vic.