Working with people vs collecting data: how AI can bridge the gap

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 8 June, 2023

Getting the best from social care services

Seldom has social care received such a significant level of attention from Westminster and devolved governments. It’s difficult to keep up with the number of consultations, green and white papers and other policy initiatives

With so many people living through chronic or acute poverty, often struggling to access the support they need because of a staffing crisis, there is no spare capacity. So how can we go about making the most of the resources available?

Allow me to present two common (and I will argue, antagonistic) responses. Neither approach is new, and readers will be familiar with examples of both.

Solution one - focus social work time on working with people rather than administration. Our valuable social work staff must be enabled to make the biggest difference to the most people, building relationships in communities and helping people to overcome the barriers they face. Let social workers use their heads, hearts and hands to bring about change. Advocates of this approach argue that the practitioner of today spends too long typing and not enough time engaging with people.

Solution two - evidence based practice. We must concentrate valuable resources on interventions that work. Analysis of high quality evidence enables us to identify effective interventions. This ensures that proven initiatives can be favoured over those which are costly and show little positive impact. Adopting this approach requires high quality data for further analysis.

These two very different approaches are often presented in the same policy documents without the recognition that it is difficult, in practice, to achieve both at the same time.

Careful use of artificial intelligence could offer a resolution.

What’s the conflict?

The proportion of social work time spent recording data is often criticised. BASW's 80/20 campaign raised the profile of this issue. In my role, I support local authorities doing their best to reduce this administrative burden. We collaborate with councils and other social care providers to streamline their recording systems. Two of our guiding principles are:

• Focus on the narrative to record the sequence of events that a person relates to - after all, it is their record!
• Use systems design to reduce the burden on the practitioner. For example enter information once and reuse it to avoid duplicate data entry

Adherence to these principles should enable practitioners to spend more time in direct practice and to keep an accurate record of that work. In reality, we often deviate from the first principle because of requirements to provide governmental bodies with specified, codified data in a certain format.

This information has to be shared in a standard format so it can be understood in the local, regional and national context. It’s difficult to judge the impact of children’s and adults' social care at scale without this kind of data. The pursuit of research evidence is one valid justification for such data collection. Difficulties arise in the detail and methods required.

Do the means achieve the ends?

The kinds of questions these governmental bodies set out to answer include:

• ‘Once a local authority becomes aware of a person in need of support what happens next for that person?’
• ‘Are young people who cannot live with their families, provided with stable homes?’
• ‘Do people from all backgrounds receive a fair and equal service?’

Specific pieces of information are collected in an attempt to answer these important questions.

But this approach has its problems:

The data doesn’t tell the full story: social workers are familiar with multiple choice checklists; they fill these out every day as part of their recording. But as a profession we’re very aware that people don’t ‘fit’ in boxes. The information collected can highlight trends and changes but serves only as a very reductionist representation of the person’s experience.

It distracts us from working with people: practitioners, quite rightly, focus their attention on the people with whom they work. They record their work professionally and tend to favour a narrative approach which foregrounds a person’s story. However sensitively forms and processes are designed, the interruption of data collection tick-boxes can be distracting.

The information isn’t reliable: worse than being a distraction, where the options aren’t intuitive, professionals may be unsure what to choose. In these situations, practitioners end up recording an option that makes little sense. For example, when forced to choose from a list of 20 possible accommodation status options, it’s no surprise when the status selected don’t seem to match the address recorded.

Looking back to look forward

It is useful to see how far we have come in terms of social care data. The sophisticated case management systems used in practice today are a far cry from the systems in place 15 or even ten years ago. The days of paper recording, diary sheets, standalone planning documents, spreadsheets and other isolated data capture solutions are long gone in most local authority social services departments. The vast majority of council social care recording is now held in sophisticated databases which enable a level of analysis that was not previously possible.

My hope for the future is that we make use of technology to mitigate the conflict between ‘doing’ social work with people and recording high quality information to inform better social policy. I have seen enough of the recording process to understand that current records don’t always offer an accurate picture of the person’s circumstances.

Some artificial intelligence innovations that are already available in the health and social care market include:

Voice capture - which allows the voice of the professional and the service user to be kept as an audio file or converted into text

Smart recording - which automatically records the right pieces of information in the right boxes on the basis of key words

Smart analysis - which sifts vast swathes of narrative information to identify patterns and trends

If the rich narrative information which flows naturally from doing social work is captured and mined for its value, I have no doubt that the resulting insights could more accurately reflect the experiences of people using social care.

Making better use of these tools will improve our intelligence, moving us closer to evidence based practice. Taking advantage of these opportunities will require some significant shifts in the way we understand management information, but could bring the added bonus of social workers spending less time scratching their heads and wondering which box to tick.

Stef Lunn is the social work practice lead for software supplier OLM and also volunteers as an advocate for care experienced young people