Social Media: Social Workers’ Views on Its Applications, Benefits and Drawbacks for Professional Practice

Abstract

Awareness about current use of social media in social work and its benefits and drawbacks is lacking. An online questionnaire collected data from a sample of 569 participants within social work across different local authorities. Nearly a third (30%) of participants said that they had used social media to ‘look up’ families they support, while less than half (47%) felt adequately trained in using social media in practice. Participants felt social media helped practice by facilitating communication both with professionals and with service users, but hindered practice by disseminating a negative portrayal of social workers, and by enabling users to identify them online, making them vulnerable. Opinions varied on whether it was acceptable to ‘look up’ families. Results highlighted a digital difference in social work with both age and professional role being influential in the way social media is used. Findings indicated a need for clearer guidance to enable a standardised code of practice, awareness of this guidance needs to be raised and the guidance regularly updated.

Keywords:

• social media
• social work
• professional boundaries

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sofia Grammenos

Sofia Grammenos achieved a distinction in her MA in Social Work from Cardiff University in 2020. Sofia currently works as a qualified social worker as part of an Intake and Assessment Team. Sofia's research interest include, social media in social work, and how to improve communication between families and their social worker.

Nell Warner

Nell Warner is a Research Associate at CASCADE, the Children's Social Care Research and Development Centre at Cardiff University. Her research interests include children's social care and the looked after system, parenting and family support interventions, the emotional well-being of parents, outcomes for children in adverse family circumstances, quantitative methods and working with administrative data Remove