Children’s Safeguarding Social Work Practitioners: Remote and Hybrid Working Practices and Experiences, 2022

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This data collection is a part of the data from the study 'Becoming agile in local authority children's safeguarding social work services'. It features transcripts of of 41 interviews, conducted with 7 social work practitioners, who each took part in between 4 and 8 interviews, over the course of 6-12 months. Interviews explored practitioners' everyday working practices, interactions with other practitioners, supervisors, and parents and children who used services, and practitioners' experiences of their work. The interviews in this collection happened between March 2021 and July 2022, and includes practitioners describing their practice in the context of social distancing because of Covid restrictions, and later periods where social workers were working using a hybrid of co-present and remote interactions with other practitioners and people who used services. These participants were part of a group of 21 practitioners: other practitioners did not give consent for their data to be shared.

Since 2010, agile approaches have been implemented increasingly enthusiastically by local authorities and the NHS in the UK. ‘Agile’ means approaches that are designed to enable simpler, more flexible organisational systems and working practices, which respond more directly to the needs of people using services. Changes include moving services online and providing employees with access to digital technologies that enable them to work more remotely and flexibly. In children’s safeguarding social work, agile approaches have led to new working practices such as remote working and increased communication between colleagues via digital information systems. Earlier research suggested that while social workers often welcomed greater flexibility about where and when they could work, agile approaches also produced new challenges in keeping information secure and maintaining working relationships with colleagues. This project aimed to: Document how service leaders, supervisors, social workers and service users described agile working Identify practitioners’, supervisors’ and service users’ practices, relationships and experiences when engaged in agile working Examine how these identified practices impact on social workers’ and service users’ communication and sense-making Develop evidence about good working practices in these contexts. The project took place from April 2020 to August 2022. During the first part of this period, most social work practice was remote, moving towards a hybrid of remote and co-present practices, often supported by digital technologies. Three local authorities in different regions of England took part in the project. 21 practitioners participated in the study, being interviewed regularly over the course of 6-12 months about their practices, relationships and experiences. Examples of participants' everyday working practices — meetings, supervision sessions, and conversations with service users — were also observed, with most of these being online, remote practices. 14 service leaders were interviewed about how and why agile approaches were being designed and implemented. 18 young people and parents who had used children's safeguarding social work services also participated through individual interviews and focus groups.