Social Work Records

Describes & evaluates the task of recordkeeping for social work practitioners.

The latest edition of Social Work Records describes an approach to recordkeeping that is well-suited to contemporary practice. The authors encourage practitioners to seek a balance among accountability, supporting and improving practice, efficiency, and client privacy in selecting and organizing information in their records. They propose guidelines for improving agency-wide policies and procedures and include new material on demonstrating cultural competence, systematic assessment, managed care, computerization, and record security. The process of recording, as well as the record itself, are described and illustrated in ways that fit the realities of todays practice. Social Work Records is a single source that: introduces the 15 principles of good records and their usefulness to assess the quality, appropriateness, and impact of services; presents an overview of the content of social work records using the Service-Centered Record format; focuses on the structure of the record by describing and analyzing a wide range of approaches, formats, and forms that are used to select and organize information; offers solutions to issues in practice from both the direct-service and the administrative perspective; provides a thorough analysis of records and the law.

Recording is regarded by most social workers as a necessary evil. The research from which this book arises found that recording is a highly complex and demanding aspect of professional practice. Why has such a critical activity received so little attention, despite the concerns over social work records identified with successive inquiries into tragic deaths? This highly topical book explores the often conflicting demands on social workers as they record information on the case files, and will stimulate a long overdue debate as to how to achieve more effective recording in social work.

Social work practitioners spend a lot of time documenting services they provide, but many are ill-prepared for this practice responsibility. In Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording, Nancy Sidell has written the perfect, practical, how-to book on developing effective documentation. Regardless of the practice setting, clinical specialty, and documentation format, this book will help to build better recording skills. In her book, Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording, Dr. Sidell provides a clear, concise, and thorough justification of why documentation is important, the different styles used to record client information, and an array of valuable case exercises to work through. Particularly useful is the inclusion of current and relevant examples of documentation that represent a range of practice fields at all levels of social work intervention to include: micro, mezzo, and macro. Woven throughout the workbook are ethical, legal, and supervisory situations that occur in practice that require the reader to critically think about how they would respond. This book is suitable and highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate education, agency trainings, and continuing education courses.

In Part One of the Munro Review (published 3rd February 2011, ISBN 9780108510137), Professor Munro set out the approach and features of the child protection system that needed exploring in detail. This second part and final report sets out recommendations to reform the child protection system, specifically from being over-bureaucratised and concerned with compliance to one that keeps a focus on children. Some of the recommendations include: that the Government should remove the specific statutory requirement on local authorities for completing assessments within often artificial set timescales; that local services which work with children and families should be freed from unhelpful government targets; that there should be an introduction of a duty on all local services to coordinate an early offer of help to families who do not meet the criteria for social care services, to address problems before they escalate to child protection issues; that Ofsted inspections of children's services should add more weight to feedback from children and families; that experienced social workers should be kept on the frontline even when they become managers so that their experience and skills are not lost and that each local authority should designate a Principal Child and Family Social Worker to report the views and experiences of the front line to all levels of management. Professor Munro also states that individual recommendations should not be taken forward in isolation but that change needs to happen across the system.

This new edition has been fully revised and updated to provide over 1,800 A-Z definitions of terms from the field of social care, concentrating on social work as a significant area within this field. Covering social work theories, methods, policies, organizations, and statutes, as well as key terms from interdisciplinary topics overlapping with health and education, this is the most up-to-date dictionary of its kind available. It also provides extended entries on specialisms such as children and families, domestic violence, and residential care, and has been extensively updated to include new legislation. Useful appendices include a glossary of acronyms and a Table of Legislation, Regulations, and Codes of Practice, cross-referenced to Dictionary entries. Entry-level bibliographies and web links provide further resources and the web links are listed and regularly updated on a dedicated companion website. Written by two leading figures in the field, and a team of eleven contributors, A Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care is a must-have for students of social work, social care, and related subjects, as well as for qualified social workers undertaking continuing professional development programmes.