Making connections between practitioner’s personal use of social media and social work practice

  • Jenny Simpson (Author)

Activity: Academic Talks or PresentationsOral presentationResearch

Description

The paper will discuss if there is any link between social work practitioner’s personal use of social media and their practice with service users. Integral to the discussion will be social work ethics and values, issues of confidentiality, professionalism and how service users are making use of social media.

The emergence of policy guidelines in relation to social media by social work employers and national professional bodies such as the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) highlights the way in which social media is becoming an inherent feature of social work practice. Moreover, helpful guidance in the form of concepts such as e-professionalism (Megele, 2011) with its focus on how social work practitioners respond to the use of online communication by service users illustrates the way in which social media can be effectively used to maintain client relationships. Nevertheless, it could be claimed that little attention has been given thus far to the connection that exists between social work practitioners’ private use of social media and whether or not there is an influence on their practice with service users.

This paper aims to discuss if there are any connections between personal use and practice, and if so, what are the underlying factors that have an impact. Integral to the discussion will be social work ethics and values, issues of confidentiality, professionalism and how service users are making use of social media.
Period14 Jul 201425 Jul 2014
Event titleJSWEC 2014 Social Work Making Connections
Event typeConference
LocationLondon, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of RecognitionNational