Costo Total : 26953

After the preliminary interviews, I decided to focus the study specifically on the CFSW Service. This was in the main because of the introduction of the SAF, which was precisely the type of inscribing device I was interested in exploring. It was being used to proceduralise an area of practice, that is, Social Work case assessment, which had previously been largely individual and tacit. It was also being used to document the process of this work. The recent child protection failure in this service was an additional driver in the move towards greater inscription, and was emblematic of the pressures on Social Work services described in the Social Work literature. Both of these factors, the SAF and the Child Protection Failure provided the points of dislocation and change which can generate reflection and debate amongst practitioners, which can be used in research. The senior managers I had interviewed in the first stage of my research had been interested in participating in further research which helped with research access at later stages in the case study.

The timetable for the research was dictated to some extent by the need to make a request for research access through the formal research access system in the Local Authority. A form outlining the aim of the research, the use of the research and potential benefits of the research to the CFSWS was completed. This form required the specific identification of the number of interviews and the status of interviewees. Although the research design was based upon the desire to undertake observation of Social Workers as well as interviews, in consultation with my PhD supervisor, I decided that it would be safer only to request the interviews at this stage. We felt that this would be more readily agreed to, rather than a somewhat unspecific request to shadow Social Workers, particularly in view of sensitivities about the privacy of clients. My hope was that once I became known to the department, and trusted, there would be a better chance of agreement to a further

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and potentially more intrusive research access request, as proved to be the case. The formal request was made through the Children and Families Research Access Officer and research access was agreed to with no problem.

Selection of interview participants

The aim of the research was to get something of an overview of the range of responses within the service. The CFSW Service is divided into 10 Practice Teams, each headed up by a Practice Team Manager (PTM), which have a geographical catchment area. I was provided with a list of all the practice teams of the service, and the names of the Practice Team Managers. I selected 5 Practice Teams, from central, northern, eastern, southern and western areas of the city and approached the Practice Team Manager from each by letter, explaining the purpose of my research and asking if I could interview them. I followed this initial letter up by phone to make appointments. All the Practice Team Managers I approached agreed to the interview. At the end of each interview with the PTM, I asked if I could interview some Social Workers from their team. From each team I asked to interview one Senior Social Worker, one Social Worker who had been qualified for at least three years, and one Social Worker who had been qualified for 2 years or less. The Practice Team Managers selected people from their team and then I made contact with the workers to arrange the interviews. All the interviews took place at the Practice Team office in the Social Work Centre. The interviews ranged from 1 to 1 ½ hrs, although one interview with a Practice Team Manager and a Senior Social Worker took over 2 hours.

In total, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted across 5 practice teams. Interviews were carried out in each team with: 1 PTM; 1 Senior Social Worker; 1 front-line Social Worker who had been qualified for more than 3 years; and 1 front- line Social Worker who had been qualified for 2 years or less. In one team, it proved impossible to confirm a meeting with the experienced worker suggested by the Practice Team manager, and my requests for other possible interviewees were not answered.

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An interview framework was designed to guide the interviews (see Appendix Four and Five), but the interviews were conducted informally. At the beginning of each interview I assured interviewees of the confidentiality of their responses and asked their permission to record the interview, which was granted in all cases. My interviewing approach drew on my experience as a person-centred counsellor, using reflective listening, unconditional positive regard and a non-directive approach to establish trust, and to follow the concerns and experiences of the interviewee, rather than imposing my research questions on them. This approach has parallels with the Gendlin’s non-judgmental listening used by Zuboff (1988). My interview framework was an aide-memoire as much as anything, to ensure I covered all the general topics I wanted to raise with the interviewee. However, apart from a standard introduction, I rejected a formal question protocol, which would have reduced the dynamic of the interview to question and answer. My intention was to give space to the interviewee to reflect upon the general issues I was introducing. In this way I was attempting to invite interviewees to discover what they felt, thought and experienced in their use of documentation devices, and thereby deepen their own understanding; to “tease out aspects of their experience which were implicit” (Zuboff, 1988, p428) My approach was not exclusively non- directive. I also gently challenged contradictory statements, in order to uncover paradoxes or tensions which might have gone unnoticed. My aim was to make people comfortable enough and to give them time and space to reflect upon and talk about their work experience. There were numerous instances when interviewees commented that the interview had given them the space to think, or made them realize things about their work that they didn’t normally take note of. I allowed interviewees to ‘get off the subject’ to the extent that they were allowed to talk about their own concerns and resentments about the work, and not just in relation to the question of documentation. For example interviewees often talked about the stress of resource limitations or their fears about a child coming to harm, which were not part of the interview framework, or indeed the focus of the research study.

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All the interviews were recorded and then transcribed in full. I also made some notes during the interview and wrote up these notes as soon as possible after each interview, to capture any strong impressions I had formed and any observational details about the setting and participants. Technical problems meant that in the case of 2 of the interviews, there was no recording. Instead, these interviews were represented in the research by notes typed up from memory and from the notes made during the interview. As a result, there are no direct quotes used from these interviews in this thesis.