A perfect storm: How digital transformation, changing office spaces and the blurring of work and non-work lives are driving the individualisation of social workers’ practice in England

Abstract

Child and family social workers’ practice has been transformed by the shift to digitally enabled hybrid working since the COVID19 pandemic. In this article, we use the analytical frame of sociomateriality to examine how digital technologies and material spaces in social workers’ homes and offices are shaping social workers’ communication and working relationships, and how hybrid working is blurring social workers’ work and non-work lives. This article analyses data from an ethnographic study of hybrid working in child and family social work services in three local authorities in England between 2020 and 2022. The article argues that the ways digitally enabled hybrid working has been implemented are driving the individualisation of social workers’ practice, meaning social workers are largely working separately from their colleagues and managers, whether at home or in offices, are working in highly differentiated ways without appreciation of differences in practice and their implications, and are carrying increasingly high levels of individual responsibility for their work. The article argues these changes have led to thinner, more transient interactions between social workers and managers, have left social workers more isolated from each other and have introduced unacknowledged complexity into practitioners’ work more generally and their communication with colleagues and people using social work services in particular.