http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5663-1325
Introduction
We are honored to co-edit a peer-reviewed double special issue of the Journal of Technology in Human Services which is the official journal of husITa. This special issue showcases papers presented at the Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development 2018 (SWSD2018) which was held in Dublin, Ireland in July 2018. husITa is a virtual community that exists through the activities of its members. The goals and vision of husITa are: to network, serve, enable, empower, and enthuse its members in their efforts to use information technology to serve humanity. The aim is to actively promote the ethical and effective use of information technology to better serve the community.
From its foundation in 1988, husITa has explored possibilities for members to meet and exchange ideas. In recent years, husITa has organized a human service technology track within the Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education, and Social Development. This Joint World conference is an event organized by the International Council on Social Welfare, the International Association of Schools of Social Work, and the International Federation of Social Workers.
The husITa stream (husITa18) held within a larger conference format has worked very well allowing delegates at the larger conference to drop in and out of the technology track, providing an opportunity to attract interest in (husITa.org) activities among the wider delegate audience.
SWSD2018 was held at The Royal Dublin Society in Ireland from July 4 to 7, 2018. Reflecting a concern for sustainable community development, the main theme of the SWSD2018 Conference was “Environmental and Community Sustainability.” For husITa, this provided an important opportunity to build awareness of and promote ethical use of technology to a global audience of human service providers. As in previous iterations of this World Conference, the SWSD2018 organizers facilitated a dedicated husITa stream within the conference to facilitate easy networking among delegates who wished to know more about or contribute to the debate on the intersection between sustainability and technology. Abstracts for the husITa stream were sent for review by the husITa chairperson and secretary. They were then organized into an attractive framework and the sessions were chaired by members of husITa. This proved to be a hugely successful and popular stream at SWSD2018 drawing participation from presenters across the world who wished to be included in the husITa section of the conference program. Over the course of SWSD2018, at least 200 of the 2,200 international delegates from 90 different countries sampled the husITa menu of 50 technology-related presentations, symposia and workshops.
Themes addressed in the husITa technology track in Dublin included: technology and older people, technology and health care transitions; telemedicine, technology and dementia care, social work research using technology, service user views on technology in human services, the digital divide, ethical use of technology in social work practice, technology and social work education, and many more. A field visit hosted by IT services at University College Dublin introduced delegates to current issues in machine learning, cybersecurity, virtual learning, data protection, and data storage.
The event in Dublin also enabled husITa to mark the 30th Anniversary of the founding of husITa, a celebration which brought together members from across the decades including some of the original founding group.
Articles in this special issue
This special issue contains a selection of papers which were presented at SWSD2018. It was a particular pleasure to have one of the founders, Dr. Walter LaMendola, Professor Emeritus at the University of Denver, present a keynote address to the Dublin conference. We are pleased to open this issue with the paper he presented, titled “Social Work, Social Technologies, and Sustainable Community Development.”
In his keynote address, Professor LaMendola reflects on the founding aims of husITa and the commitment to “a technology to support humanity.” In the 1980s, he argues, social workers were skeptical about computing and technology in professional practice. He reviews the changes brought about by social technologies. He discusses technology applications as “behavioral interventions” that can generate harm but also public good. He also outlines a “networked learning model” based on combined features of social work education and technology. This combines social technologies, community mobilization, and graduate social work education. Two programs at the University of Denver use the model to support human flourishing, local culture, and community sustainability practices in mountain and indigenous communities. By combining social technologies with locally relevant resource development and practical service learning, he argues, social work education can play a unique and important role. Noting the move by universities to incorporate technology in social work education, he elaborates how this is generating support for a “flipped approach” where students learn from each other, from their environment, and from knowledgeable teachers who constantly tweak the content structure to support better educational outcomes. The article concludes with a reminder that those who came before us created new social forms and were distinguished by their strong advocacy for human dignity and rights.
In her article titled “Rediscovering social work leaders through YouTube as archive: The CASW oral history project,” Tara La Rose showcases a social work history project in which oral recordings of pioneer social workers have been digitized and shared online. The historical importance of these recordings is, thus, preserved for and made accessible to future generations of social workers, opening up possibilities for analysis of the evolution of social work and the factors which supported the development of the profession. La Rose reveals that more recordings will be digitized over the timeframe of the project and it is likely, therefore, that we will see more scholarship emerging in relation to this innovative initiative.
“Challenges of Usage of Big Data in Decision Making in Welfare Institutions” by Diane Schneider and Udo Seelmeyer raises a number of important issues regarding the use of decision-support systems and artificial intelligence in case assessment and classifications. The authors argue that big data analytics are increasingly replacing human decision-making processes in practice fields. The example of the MAEWIN project is presented to explore the challenges of using big data when developing decision support systems in social work. The authors identify issues around data protection, bias and handling probabilities, and the challenge posed by the knowledge base of social work.
In their article titled “Incorporating Facebook into Nonprofit Supports for Family Caregivers: Reflections on its Value and Relevance,” Liam O’Sullivan and Zoe Hughes highlight how technology can enhance the ability of human service organizations to connect with their intended client groups. In this instance, the use of a Facebook page is described in detail including how it helped augment the numbers of carers which this carer support organization could connect with on a regular basis. This article also highlights the level of work and expertise necessary to use technology for such purposes as well as the financial resources which may need to be invested in order to ensure that the technology is used effectively and ethically. There are very encouraging messages in this article about the usefulness of technology in reaching dispersed and often hidden populations.
The views of newly qualified social workers regarding the use of technology in their work are explored in the article titled “Social Media Surveillance in Social Work: Practice Realities and Ethical Implications” by Julie Byrne, Gloria Kirwan and Conor McGuckin. This article reports on research in Ireland with newly qualified social workers which aimed to explore the extent to which recent graduates perceive changes (if any) to occur during their transition from student to professional in relation to their usage of electronic forms of communication, both synchronous and asynchronous. Recent graduates also highlighted ways in which technology can assist them in terms of responding quickly to clients and delivering efficiency in their work. However, the findings also reveal the ethical problems they encountered surrounding privacy issues. This included questions regarding the extent to which it is ethical to search for client information in online forums or how to respond if clients use new technologies to record interviews or post comments online about their interactions with social workers.
Somaya Ben Allouch and Judith Boonstra address an important on-going debate on managerialism of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) use in their article titled, “The Development and Implementation of a Mobile Application in Human Services.” Drawing on a range of literature they suggest that much of the debate concerns the use of social media. In particular, the concern in social work appears to be mostly about professional ethics while less attention is given to discussion of applications of technology in social work interventions. Set in a Dutch social work context, this article describes the pilot study in which the mobile application is developed and tested. The research outlines the experiences of job coaches and employees when using the mobile application which was specifically designed for a social work context. The article addresses the challenges posed for social workers in adopting, implementing, and using a mobile application which is designed to support them and their clients in an employment program.
“Mapping and Visualizing the Social Work Curriculum” by Neil Ballantyne, Kathryn Hay, Liz Beddoe, Jane Maidment and Shayne Walker reports on a substantial project undertaken in New Zealand in which technology was utilized to map and classify the social work curriculum as taught across 14 different institutions. Thus, this article reveals not only how technology can be employed in such a mapping exercise but it also illuminates the complexity of the social work curriculum and the wide range of topics contained within it. In an era when criticism of social work education is sometimes an easy way for society to avoid deeper analysis of the problems social work tries to tackle, this project testifies to the breadth and depth of social work knowledge which resides within the social work curriculum. For educators involved in curriculum design and delivery, this article will be of particular interest.
In their article titled “Infographics as an Assignment to Build Digital Skills in the Social Work Classroom,” Nathalie Jones, Melanie Sage and Laurel Hitchcock argue that social work educators have an important role to play in the development of technology skills among students and practicing social workers. By incorporating technology into assignments, classroom discussions, and continuing education workshops, they suggest that educators can help students and practitioners grapple with the ethical challenges of using technology to address client and community outcomes, as well as helping them to develop the necessary digital skills needed to effectively use technology in practice. The authors note that technology has prompted a cultural shift within the field of social work and enables social workers to share knowledge and network internationally. Quite specifically, the authors note how social workers can utilize technology to assist with their roles as advocate, case manager, and broker.
The article, “The Impact of Nontraditional and Sustainable Textbook Options on Student Learning in a Social Work Skills Course” by Becky Anthony and Victoria M. Venable, delivers a number of important messages for social work educators related to the ways in which students engage with module content and the importance of adopting core texts which meet the learning needs of students. Equally important is the finding that using technology to bring down the costs of course materials can play an important role in promoting economic justice in the social work classroom, a point which highlights the economic burdens many social work students endure during their education, a phenomenon which Anthony and Venable usefully highlight.
An interesting article by Alan Barsky titled, “Technology in Field Education: Managing Ethical Issues” highlights the growing trend of incorporating the use of technology into fieldwork education, a move generally regarded by the author as progressive and helpful to students and practice teachers. However, the ethical dimensions of technology use in such contexts is also emphasized and this article discusses the need to pay attention to issues such as confidentiality, professional boundaries, and client safety when incorporating technology into the field education context.
We would like to thank all the contributors who submitted articles for this special issue and we hope that readers will find many topics of interest within this published selection. We would also like to thank all the reviewers who were outstandingly responsive in helping us prepare this issue in less than a year after the conference itself. We would also like to extend our thanks to Lauri Goldkind, editor of this journal, whose support was invaluable to us in our role as guest editors. We believe this special issue provides a window into the benefits of organizing a technology stream at global gatherings such as SWSD2018 and we look forward to similar events in the future.
University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
[email protected]
Gloria Kirwan
National University of Ireland, Co. Kildare, Ireland; Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5663-1325