Applying standardisation tools in social work practice from the perspectives of social workers, managers, and politicians: a Swedish case study

ABSTRACT

This article reports findings from a case study of the practical application of a standardisation tool in everyday social work practice. The example tool used herein is the Swedish version of the UK-based Integrated Children’s System, which in Sweden is known as Children’s Needs in Focus (Barns Behov i Centrum; BBIC). The study analyses group and individual interviews with social workers, managers and politicians using concepts from implementation research and the micro-sociological concept of accounts. The findings demonstrate how participants describe and explain their deviations from the BBIC manual and from the more informal intentions of the tool. Such deviations are conditioned by the fact that professionals often employ their own discretion in their work, which is necessarily inherent in human service occupations such as social work. Although the BBIC was initially well received, the professionals describe how that reception eventually turned to scepticism and a more critical stance toward the manual. This can be attributed to both absence of significant necessary implementation conditions and key organisational factors as well as a lack of compatibility between the tool’s construction and users’ needs and expectations. This article also discusses the general socio-technical and organisational implications of these findings.

ABSTRAKT

Denna artikel rapporterar resultat från en fallstudie av den praktiska tillämpningen av ett standardiseringsverktyg i socialt arbete. Det verktyg som används som exempel är den svenska versionen av det engelska Integrated Children’s System (ICS), i Sverige kallat Barns Behov i Centrum (BBIC). Studien analyserar grupp- och individuella intervjuer med socialarbetare, chefer och politiker utifrån begrepp hämtade från implementeringsforskning och det mikrosociologiska begreppet accounts. Resultatet visar hur deltagarna beskriver och förklarar avvikelser från BBIC-manualen och från de mer informella intentionerna med verktyget. Sådana avvikelser är betingade av det faktum att yrkesverksamma ofta använder sig av sitt diskretionära handlingsutrymme, något som av nödvändighet utgör en del av människobehandlande professioner såsom socialt arbete. Trots att BBIC initialt togs emot positivt i organisationen, beskriver professionella hur de efterhand blev mer skeptiska och fick en mer kritisk hållning till verktyget. Detta kan bero på avsaknaden av viktiga villkor för implementering samt bristfällig kompatibilitet mellan verktygets konstruktion och användarnas behov och förväntningar. I artikeln diskuteras även resultatens socio-tekniska och organisatoriska implikationer.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• standardisation tools
• Integrated Children’s System
• discretionary space
• domain theory
• accounts

NYCKELORD:

• Socialt arbete
• standardiseringsverktyg
• Integrated Children’s System
• handlingsutrymme
• domänteori
• accounts

Introduction

The point of departure of this article is the increasing demand for efficiency and rationality in social work practices. This development in social work and other public sectors has been linked to the so-called risk society, in which ever-increasing complexity within and between different societal functions has reduced both public and political confidence in traditional professions (Power, 1997). To counter this in the social sector, national guidelines, evidence-based methods and standardisation tools have been implemented and imposed from the top down (Evetts, 2010), reflecting a transition from occupational to organisational professionalism (Svensson, 2010). Unlike the traditional collegial and professional discretion normally allotted to professionals, organisational professionalism relies on instrumental knowledge mediated by tools and routines that standardise governance and public services.

Researchers have demonstrated a gap between the intended formal qualities of such new guidelines and tools and their compatibility with social work (see Broadhurst, Wastell, et al., 2010; Lipsky, 2010). This gap has been attributed to professional characteristics and organisational conditions as well as the character of social services. As Lipsky (2010) noted, because social services often include personal interactions between professionals and clients with different needs and capacities, professionals need discretionary space to mediate public resources and professional knowledge to optimise client support. Studying organisational conditions almost 40 years ago, Kouzes and Mico (1979) introduced the political, managerial, and professional levels as three separate organisational domains with different rationales. For example, while principles such as ideology and equitable distribution of public resources are important for the political domain, hierarchical governance and control are important for the management domain, and professional autonomy and improved living conditions for clients are important for the professional domain. Munro (2004) described the nature of social work as particularly challenging for managerial governance and control, as it is a service area with a limited established and professionally shared knowledge base concerning what works regarding client outcomes.

This article presents a study of the practical application of a standardisation tool within the area of social child and family care in a typical Swedish social service organisation. We focus on challenges social workers, managers and politicians experience related to the nature of the tool and on their rationales for using the tool (or not) when performing investigations and trying to meet the needs of clients.

Standardisation tools in human service organisations: implementation and use

Previous research on implementation of new standards in human service organisations (HSOs) distinguishes two related perspectives: the introductory phase and everyday practice. When a new tool, for example, is introduced, actors must comprehend the implementation decision and the meaning of the new tool, they need to be willing to implement the tool and they need the capacity in terms of individual knowledge and skills and organisational support to do so (Hasenfeld, 2010; Johansson, 2010). Apart from affecting the implementation in the initial stage, the impact of these factors likely changes over time as the organisation changes, personnel are replaced and experience is gained with the tool.

The importance of willingness to implement can be considered in light of the professional discretion social workers have when performing their work. Although decisions at the organisational level can restrict this discretionary space, social workers may develop routines and strategies that deviate from the more formal rules and procedures of their organisation (Lipsky, 2010). At the same time, working in child and family care is a demanding task and deviations may be a matter not only of willingness but also of capacity (Brodkin, 1997). Similarly, deviations from formal procedures may not be a result of incomprehension regarding an implementation decision but rather a consequence of the decision colliding with the professional’s view of good practice (Wastell, White, Broadhurst, Peckover, & Pithouse, 2010).

Similarly, Fixsen, Blasé, Naoom, and Duda (2013) identified several key components or drivers that support the implementation of methods and programs within HSOs: competency drivers are mechanisms that develop, improve and sustain actors’ capacity to implement a tool or program; organisation drivers are mechanisms that develop favourable settings for execution; and leadership drivers include adaptive leaders who provide support throughout the implementation process.

Research into the everyday use of standardisation tools shows a somewhat ambivalent attitude among social workers. On the one hand, there is a desire to implement standardised working procedures (Cleaver & Walker, 2004; Høybye-Mortensen, 2015; Nygren, Hyvönen, & Khoo, 2009; Shaw et al., 2009), mirroring the new professionalism (Martinell Barfoed & Jacobsson, 2012) and trends towards more efficient and rational professional practice (Skillmark & Denvall, 2017). On the other hand, research more closely examining the enactment of standardisation tools in practice shows they are often considered time-consuming and may lead to less time spent with clients (Broadhurst, Wastell, et al., 2010; de Witte, Declerq, & Hermans, 2016; Huuskonen & Vakkari, 2013; Shaw et al., 2009; White, Broadhurst, et al., 2009). This has led researchers to claim that the relational aspects of social work practice are under threat due to recent efforts toward standardisation (Broadhurst, Hall, Wastell, White, & Pithouse, 2010).

The expediency of standardisation tools has also been questioned (Broadhurst, Hall, et al., 2010; Shaw et al., 2009; White, Wastell, Broadhurst, & Hall, 2010). One recurring theme is the so-called descriptive tyranny of forms (Gubrium, Buckholdt, & Lynott, 1989), as forms make narrative thinking and documentation difficult, often fragmenting the client’s story (de Witte et al., 2016; Hall, Parton, Peckover, & White, 2010; White, Hall, & Peckover, 2009). Related to this is discontent concerning restrictions of professional freedom by standardised tools (Wastell et al., 2010).

Research also shows how social workers cope with and manage top-down imperatives, for example, by manipulating standardisation tools to achieve outcomes already determined by the user (Gillingham & Humphreys, 2010). Other examples include deflection strategies and shortcuts to maintain workflow and meet performance targets (Broadhurst, Wastell, et al., 2010), for example, gaining time by signing off cases before completing the forms (Wastell et al., 2010) or by ‘simply putting x in obligatory fields’ (de Witte et al., 2016, p. 1260).

To summarise, implementation research has identified general factors that are important on an organisational level. Regarding the practice level, the literature describes strategies social workers use when they perceive top-down imposed tools as interfering with their professional practice or workload. However, Høybye-Mortensen (2015) concludes that we need to acknowledge that different tools implemented in different settings require different strategies. It is therefore important to understand how key actors in their everyday contexts explain these strategies and what factors influence or induce their actions.

Context of the study

In this article, we present a study of how Swedish social workers, managers, and politicians describe their everyday use and perception of a standardised tool in the area of child and family care. In Sweden, local municipalities, often through a political social service committee, are ultimately responsible for promoting children’s welfare. The activities within these organisations involve several actors or domains. The professional domain is often divided into separate departments, such as child and family care, drug abuse treatment and elderly services. In several cases, the professionals have the power to make decisions, but more expensive or compulsory interventions must be decided by the political committee; social workers’ investigations form an important basis for those decisions. The management domain, often dominated by employees with backgrounds as social workers, operates between the professional and the political domain and includes roles from supervisors at the front to top-floor heads who focus mainly on budgetary and administrative responsibilities (Shanks, Lundström, & Wiklund, 2015).

The tool used herein is the Swedish version of the UK-based Integrated Children’s System (ICS): Barns Behov i Centrum (BBIC), which translates as Children’s Needs in Focus. The ICS and its forerunners have been transferred to several countries and thus have had a significant influence on social work practice outside their countries of origin (Nygren et al., 2009).

The BBIC consists of documents, forms and a manual describing its principles and theoretical underpinnings; it also includes directives about what information to collect about children and their families, what forms to use and in what order to collect information. Since 2006, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) has tried to implement the BBIC and thereby standardise parts of social work practice. Today, almost all of Sweden’s 290 local municipalities use the BBIC, but research on its execution is limited and divergent (Matscheck & Berg Eklundh, 2015). Some researchers claim that the BBIC undermines professional autonomy and creativity (Lauri, 2016) and might lead to deprofessionalisation (Agevall, Jonnergård, & Krantz, 2017), whereas others argue that the BBIC may be a way for social workers to regain trust in a professional field that is often questioned (Ponnert & Svensson, 2016) and it might enhance the quality of work in the field (Nygren et al., 2009). Research has also shown that local implementations of the BBIC may include pushes for organisational and procedural obedience as well as more occupational principles (Skillmark & Denvall, 2017).

Aims and methods

An examination of the existing literature shows that more empirical research is needed into how key actors use standardisation tools in their everyday practice, how they argue when they do not do so in an expected way and what factors explain their actions. The aim of this article is to contribute to such knowledge by analysing how key actors describe their use of a standardised tool, using the BBIC as an example in a local social service practice. We focus in particular on whether different types of deviations from the tool’s manual and formal intentions occur. In such cases, we try to understand the causes in the context of the actor’s own perception of his or her position and tasks in the organisation.

As the study’s focus is how professional and political actors in a social service organisation use and perceive a standardised tool and why, a case study design is appropriate. This design is considered especially suitable for answering how and why questions capturing a phenomenon – in our case the use of a standardisation tool – in its natural context when the context can be assumed to affect the phenomenon (Yin, 2009), an assumption supported by previous research into tools like the BBIC.

The social service organisation in question is typically divided into three departments: initial assessment, assessment and foster care. It belongs to an average size municipality situated in a densely populated region. The municipality is representative of its kind, with a mix of local manufacturing companies, and it is the largest employer in the area. The organisation includes about 100 social workers, managers and administrators, the majority of whom are social workers. At the time of the study, the BBIC had been in use for about five years; the study’s focus thus extends beyond problems associated with the tool’s initial implementation.

Data were collected using individual and group interviews. Group interviews are preferable when trying to gain a deeper understanding of how a phenomenon occurs or is understood in its natural context (Kitzinger, 1994). To provide a comprehensive picture of BBIC use in the organisation, respondent selection was guided by the domain theory of Kouzes and Mico (1979). Four group interviews were conducted with social workers (n = 18) from pre-existing working groups in the organisation’s three departments. With very few exceptions, the participants are women with a BA in social work. Time as social workers varies from a few months to over 40 years. Four managers from the departments and the head manager of the organisation were interviewed individually, as were five politicians from the social service committee. It was not practical for either the politicians or the managers to gather for group interviews. Of the managers, two are men and three are women; all have a background as social workers and there is a widespread in their time as managers. One of the five politicians is a woman and the rest are men, and all have long experience as local politicians.

An interview guide was developed that covered similar themes across the three domains with adjustments to fit the respondents’ positions within the organisation. The construction of the guide was based on the study’s theoretical origins in Kouzes and Mico’s (1979) domain theory, Lipsky’s (2010) discussion of social workers’ discretionary space and previous research on implementation of new standards in HSOs. Themes addressed included how the respondents understand the purpose of the BBIC, how they perceive their knowledge of and resources to use the tool and how the BBIC affects their work.

The recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and the text was related to concepts such as implementation drivers, deflecting strategies, comprehension and capacity. Interview texts were then condensed and analysed guided by these concepts (Layder, 1998; Yin, 2009) to understand how the BBIC tool was supposed to function, how it was actually used and what conditioned this use in the setting, given practitioners’ explanations.

Analytical concepts

The analytical perspectives and concepts used in this study are drawn from four sources, of which three have been previously introduced. The first source is implementation research (Fixsen et al., 2013; Hasenfeld, 2010; Johansson, 2010), which identifies factors of importance when implementing new standards in HSOs. The second source is Kouzes and Mico’s (1979) identification of the three separate domains with different rationales in social service organisations. The third source is Lipsky’s (2010) discussion of social workers’ discretionary space. A fourth source is micro-sociological research examining how actors in different social contexts explain their actions. Scott and Lyman (1968) use the term accounts to refer to legitimising explanations given by individuals in situations in which their actions can be perceived as divergent from what is expected. They distinguish between two types of accounts – excuses and justifications. Excuses are explanations in situations in which the actor admits the act but tries to avoid responsibility, whereas justifications are acknowledgements of responsibility accompanied by arguments that the act is not reprehensible or that the actor even has a credible reason for performing the act.

Scott and Lyman (1968) identify several types of excuses and justifications; we use three in our analyses: excuses in the form of accidents or defeasibility and justifications in the form of appeals to loyalties. Accidents include, for instance, unfortunate circumstances in the environment or beyond the individual’s control. The concept of defeasibility borrowed from its ethical and legal context refers to inadequate conditions or opportunities for the actor to perform according to his or her knowledge and will (e.g. due to lack of competence or limitations on actions). Justifications in the form of appeals to loyalty refer to citing values or the interests of another person and giving these precedence over the expected action, for example, a person in need.

The study conforms to the ethical standards for human and social science research in Sweden. Ethical committee approval was not needed for the study according to Swedish laws as no sensitive personal data were used in such a way that individual participants can be identified (The Personal Data Act 1998:204). Participation was based on verbal informed consent from the participants following receipt of full information about the study, including how the results would be presented.

The study design does have some limitations. First, there might be a discrepancy between the respondents’ statements and their actions. By including social workers as well as managers and politicians, we tried to obtain a more complete and valid picture of the organisation’s use of the BBIC. We also presented our findings in two seminars that provided all employees an opportunity to comment, and their comments confirm our findings are consistent with their experiences of using the BBIC.

The study is theory-driven and some of our results are in line with those from other studies of implementation and execution of standardisation tools, both theoretically and empirically. This may indicate that our results have bearing outside the context studied herein (Seale, 1999).

Results

We first present results showing how the social workers describe how they use divergent actions in their practice to handle what they see as obstacles in the BBIC forms – obstacles to their desire to improve clients’ living conditions. Using Scott and Lyman’s (1968) concept of accounts, we also present legitimising explanations of why social workers’ use these divergent actions.

Executing the BBIC in practice

All respondents from the professional and management domains were aware that their handling of the BBIC did not always follow the standard template or organisational routines. Participants usually identified the forms themselves and the technical parts of the BBIC as the main problem.

We identified three themes in the described deviations from intended use by the participants. First, participants account for exclusion of content. Deflection strategies are sometimes used in social work practice due to the frequent complexity of situations, which may make it necessary to prioritise between tasks. This is evident especially in the assessment department; in times of constant high workload and in the best interests of their clients social workers often ‘have to throw together an investigation’ several months after providing service. One social worker stated, ‘You fix the intervention, so the client doesn’t have to suffer, then you sit down quite long afterwards and write it up [the investigation].’ The rationale is that just because it takes significant time to document an investigation, clients should not suffer; they need some kind of immediate support. The deflection manifests as a shift in the timing of different steps in the administrative process rather than complete abandonment of the process.

Exclusion can also be related to a lack of understanding of how to use the tool or the reason behind using certain forms or an effort to reduce unreasonable workload. Social workers in the foster care department explain why they do not use the mandatory implementation plan:

You skip it because it is not so important. You may choose [to focus on] something else, more important. (Social worker, foster care department)

I do no mind being straight about it: I don’t know what to write. (Social worker, foster care department)

Related to efforts to reduce workload, statements like ‘I don’t always do it the way I should’ or ‘I just don’t do it’ are found in data across all groups within the professional domain. In an example from the initial assessment department, a social worker states that an application from a family was not administered using the BBIC application form because ‘well, when applications come in, I sometimes don’t do what I should do and file them as counselling cases instead of applications’. This gatekeeping at the organisational boundaries is acknowledged by all participants in the initial assessment department. As the first employees to meet potential clients, it helps to reduce their current burden and decreases future work along the organisational chain.

In not documenting investigations in a timely manner, the social workers use accounts in the form of justifications, invoking client needs as more valuable than following administrative routines. They also use excuses in the form of defeasibility due to lack of knowledge or capacity, such as not knowing what to write down in a mandatory form or not opening an application file in order to reduce workload. In both cases, explanations are attributed to causes perceived as being outside of their competence or control.

The second theme of deviation is accounting for administrative rationalisation, a strategy that involves the computer’s copy–paste function when documenting information in the BBIC. Social workers in the assessment group question why they ‘have to write the same stuff in many different places’, concluding that it becomes a practice of ‘copy and paste, copy and paste’. This may apply both within cases and between cases – sometimes resulting in embarrassing situations, as in this example of a form reaching the foster care department:

It happens from time to time, that it is the brother or sister’s name instead. And the text is like copied from a box. We have certainly also done that. (Social worker, foster care department)

But we try to read each other’s [investigations] / … / and just check that you don’t do these mistakes. (Social worker, foster care department)

For social workers in the foster care department, the problem is not the rationalisation strategy itself. The problem is that unintended consequences of the copy–paste strategy sometimes become evident to others.

Shortcuts like these are not genuine ‘deflection’ strategies but rather attempts to rationalise reducing the administrative workload without ignoring the proper forms or steps in utilising the tool. That is, using the technique is not a deviation that needs to be justified and unintended consequences may be excused as mere mistakes.

A third theme of deviation is accounting for pragmatic documentation and information use, which concerns how to categorise or use collected information. The BBIC assessment form is divided into various sections in which a child’s needs should be documented. However, social workers describe a more pragmatic actual documentation method accounted for by justifications, as in the examples below from the assessment department:

Nowadays, I think that the important thing is to insert the information somewhere, and not to repeat it. (Social worker, assessment department)

And if you insert it in the health section, and I in the education section, that really doesn’t matter that much, as long as the information is in there. (Social worker, assessment department)

Sometimes important information about a child is acknowledged as not documented at all or documentation is so vague that it has limited value for the receiving social workers. This is most evident in the foster care department. As one social worker points out, a conclusion in an assessment that ‘she [the child] has a need to eat’ is too non-specific when trying to match the child’s needs to a proper foster home. The same kind of vagueness can occur regarding children’s schooling. Another social worker gives an example: ‘in the investigation, the information is more about a general need for “good schooling”. Yes, but what does that mean for this child?’.

These shortcomings of the intended usefulness of the BBIC may occur because of a lack of comprehension and capacity on the part of social workers. Here, the findings strengthen previous research about social workers’ de facto discretion to act in a divergent manner with regard to top-down intentions when using standardisation tools (Lipsky, 2010; Wastell et al., 2010). A further explanation may be that the BBIC tool is not suitable for an assessment and intervention process divided between several departments.

Conditions for working, or not working, with the BBIC

In principle, documenting one’s professional investigations and assessments using a standardised tool like the BBIC is a fundamental administrative activity in HSOs embraced by all participants in the different domains because such documentation increases legal security, makes social work more transparent and allows evaluation of social work practices – all in line with the intentions of the BBIC (National Board of Health and Welfare [NBHW], 2008). The participants also point to other factors influencing their willingness to use the tool (cf. Nygren et al., 2009; Shaw et al., 2009). In all interviews, the uniformity accompanying consistent use of the BBIC is seen as enhancing the possibility for clients to receive equivalent support regardless of where they live. Other statements concern increased participation of the clients in the investigation process.

However, when the participants reflect on the BBIC in their own practice, a more problem-oriented attitude emerges that helps to further explain the patterns and accounts described in the previous section, as exemplified in the following quotes from two social workers in the assessment department:

It feels pathetic now when we talk about it. I have really high ambitions and will, but resources are lacking: we cannot do what we are here for. (Social worker, assessment department)

It has become so much documentation instead of work with clients. We have the [BBIC] license and that means we have certain obligations. (Social worker, assessment department)

The decision to use the BBIC in the organisation is taken by local politicians, which means that the professionals cannot exclude the BBIC at their own discretion. They are in limbo. Although a governing standardisation tool exists, the social workers do not have the prerequisite conditions to use it. Instead, they use accounts in the form of excuses and refer to defeasibility to describe their dissatisfaction with not being able to carry out what they believe to be good quality social work.

Both managers and politicians also highlight the facts that professionals are constantly falling behind with documentation and have high caseloads and insufficient time, as well as noting that the organisation has high staff turnover, all of which pose difficulties. The senior manager, for example, reflected whether ‘there are enough personnel’ and if not, this might ‘make the organisation weaker’ with regard to use of the BBIC. According to one of the politicians, factors like these may explain why the BBIC investigations presented to the political social service committee are sometimes characterised as rush jobs, full of typos and ambiguities:

And sometimes I can experience that – fast and wrong, fast and wrong! And I can understand that / … / but they [the social workers] must have good working conditions, they must have time to do their assignments. (Politician)

Thus, even the managers and politicians refer to organisational excuses such as defeasibility when explaining shortcomings in the quality of investigations.

As other research shows (Gubrium et al., 1989), the descriptive demands of forms can seem tyrannical to those filling them out. In our study, all participants highlighted the importance of a narrative in the documentation and indicated that the standardisation inherent in the BBIC tool complicates this. According to them, the structure of the forms, with different boxes and headings, fragments a child’s story. A manager reflects on this as well as the potential consequences for the clients:

I didn’t know where to place my eyes [when reading an assessment]. Remember that I have read a fair number of assessments. I think: how is this for our clients? Reading this with three shouting kids next to them? (Second-tier manager)

One politician also expresses trouble understanding the forms and their content and concludes that ‘ … then, of course, it is probably harder for our clients’. One of the social workers from the assessment department confirms this claiming ‘I really don’t meet any client that understands much about the headings, what our assessment is, etc’.

However, some social workers from the initial assessment department argue that the assessments have become better since the implementation of the BBIC. One politician also speaks about a time during the initial implementation when they read both ordinary assessments and assessments conducted in the BBIC form, saying that ‘it was much easier to absorb what was in the BBIC’. Participants from all domains also describe how they have learned, through the years, to read the investigations and get a sense of coherence from the text.

With some exceptions, we can see from the examples that participants from all three domains problematise the BBIC tool in relation to both their own reading of the assessments and the clients’ perspective. This common desire to describe and document in a coherent narrative form various aspects of a child’s situation and needs seems to be valid in different contexts (e.g. White, Hall, et al., 2009) and the (in)compatibility of the tool’s forms and boxes with the centrality of the narrative in social work practice the problem (cf. de Witte et al., 2016).

Closely connected to the key implementation drivers of Fixsen et al. (2013) – leadership and competency – responsibility and reflection are important conditional factors for the social workers. In the interviews, five different names came up when interviewees were asked who is responsible for the BBIC tool in the organisation. In fact, no one had been given this assignment, showing a lack of a key leadership function. The social workers wanted a person to whom they could turn when they have questions and who can coordinate the use of the tool.

There were also requests for time and context for reflection. Most social workers who were active during the implementation of the BBIC recall a time when different forums existed to reflect on the BBIC together with their peers, for instance about how the BBIC suited or did not suit certain aspects of their jobs. According to the managers, opportunities for social workers’ to collegially reflect upon their own practice also helped prevent separation of the organisation into ‘islands’ that did not communicate with each other. Thus, organisational and process-related mechanisms to develop and improve the social workers’ competence to implement and use the BBIC appear to be missing.

As shown in the findings above, the social workers are not unwilling to use the BBIC. The findings also show that if practitioners are not provided with organisational, competency and leadership drivers (Fixsen et al., 2013) in the form of time, collegial forums for reflection, and mandate to use the BBIC according to their own professional rationales, they will try to accomplish their tasks as best as they can. In doing so, they describe strategies we have referred to as exclusion of content, administrative rationalisation, and pragmatic documentation and information use. This also has consequences for the managers and politicians, which we will discuss in the concluding discussion.

Concluding discussion

We have shown how key actors within a Swedish child and family social service organisation describe and explain their unexpected actions when using a standardisation tool. In the context of an audit society, this is an example of how social workers use their de facto discretion to resist top-down governance through ‘the power to act, though [it is] not necessarily officially recognized’ (Evans, 2010, p. 33). To document an assessment using such standardised forms with fixed boxes and headings is, as described by Shaw et al. (2009) with reference to the ICS, ‘a superhuman task’.

The introduction of standardised tools like the ICS (and the BBIC) is part of a transition from occupational professionalism to organisational professionalism within public services (Svensson, 2010). This transition is reinforced when the social services are criticised for working in an unsystematic way and with a lack of satisfactory documentation practices (Ponnert & Svensson, 2016). In Sweden, the profession’s shortcomings were especially noted in several government audits during the 1990s (NBHW, 2008). Here we can see similarities between the UK and Sweden concerning both identified problems and the government’s top-down solutions to those problems.

Regarding why the NBHW chose the ICS, despite known criticisms of the system, it may be that they felt a need for a greater control of the local authorities due to the repeated criticism of their investigation and documentation praxis; they tried to balance this and the criticism of the ICS via a strategy that includes professional participation and structures for learning and development (NBHW, 2008). One reason this balancing act fell to the side of standardisation could be that both the national audit and local authorities prioritised compliance with the national manuals and fixed forms over local adaption and professional autonomy – thereby securing the formal requirements for the tool’s license.

As highlighted by Munro (2004), the knowledge base of social work does not fit into such standardised frameworks and social work practice must evolve through professional wisdom and experience. In such a situation, the quest for a narrative structure in the investigation and assessment process becomes central, which in our study is stressed by social workers as well as managers and politicians – and the standardisation inherent in the BBIC tool is an obstacle to achieving this.

Compared with previous studies, which have often focused on only the professional level, our study has used the domain theory of Kouzes and Mico (1979), thereby contributing a more complete picture of the interdependency between the professional, managerial and political levels and domains of social service organisations. A key conclusion is that by not providing social workers with the necessary working conditions, managers and politicians undermine their own opportunities to fulfil their rationales: without reliable client documentation, politicians will have problems securing equitable distribution of public resources and managers will have problems with a transparent hierarchical governance and control – and the social workers will have problems mediating professional knowledge and supporting clients in an optimal way.

The two perspectives on professionalism inherent in this dilemma – occupational and organisational professionalism – may not be compatible, but a balance between the two must be achieved. We agree with Munro (2004) that just increasing the discretionary space of social workers is not the way to go, as qualities such as increased legal security, more transparent social work and better possibilities for evaluating practice are inherently worth striving for. Simultaneously, if standardised tools such as the BBIC or ICS are not suitable or even possible for social workers to use according to prescribed manuals and administrative routines, these outcomes cannot be achieved.

Achieving a balance between occupational professionalism and organisational professionalism must incorporate the actual professional conditions of the personal social services. Similar calls for designing systems based on user needs and working practice are found in contexts in which the ICS has been implemented (Broadhurst, Wastell, et al., 2010; Shaw et al., 2009). Combining our results with those of these studies’, we can identify several critical points.

From the professional practice perspective, the tools and systems must better fit important features of the users’ encounters with their clients, such as creating a trustful relationship and constructing narratives in the documentation – the latter of which is hampered by the tools’ fixed boxes and headings. These structuring demands are also not adapted to maintain close and flexible relationships with the clients in a social service often organised as a stepwise assessment and intervention process. Apart from these inherent socio-technical flaws, the common situation of high caseloads and staff turnover within child and family care further accentuates these constraints.

For implementing and organisational learning to develop a fit between standardisation tools and actual professional working practices, there must also be time and forums for collegial reflection. The same applies to audit and monitoring processes focusing not only on adherence to forms and national manuals but also to the consequences of the tools in context with regards to contributing to a favourable professional practice for social workers.

To summarise, if the professional features that characterise the practice of social workers, as well as the actual consequences of organisational and monitoring conditions affecting this practice, are not taken seriously, the intended qualities and outcomes of standardised tools will not be realised.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank professor Verner Denvall for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mikael Skillmark, a former social worker, recently defended his PhD thesis about standardisation of social work practice. He is particularly interested in the implementation and execution of assessment tools in the social services and what consequences standardisation might have for social work as a profession and a field of practice. He has also published articles on social work, gender, violence and victimisation.

Lars Oscarsson is senior professor of social work. His main research areas are implementation and evaluation of social work practice, alcohol and drug abuse treatment, child and family care including foster homes and residential care. He is currently working in a project studying national policies for individual decisions in child and family care and alcohol and drug abuse treatment, their application to and management in local practices.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Linnaeus University (Linnéuniversitetet).