Street-Level Strategies of Child Welfare Social Workers in Flanders: The Use of Electronic Client Records in Practice

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• ontrary to Charlotte, a paper client record can be used during home visits and social workers can add documents they receive from other services.

• the social’ to ‘the informational

• elational dimensions of their work.

• ICT policy and the execution of that policy in practice, but also decrease the extent to which accountability can be realised via registration data

• social work interventions can be measured and made transparent at the micro, meso and macro levels

• hat technological developments bring significant efficiency gains that will lead to increased investment in front line services

• Electronic client records (ECR) specifically were seen as useful means to realise these goals because, through such records, relevant information concerning service users, their problems, the offered services and the effect of those services can be gathered, stored, processed and analysed

• First, ECR can support social work practice. ICT supports the implementation, evaluation and evaluation of guidelines (Goud et al., 2014). Second, relevant insights and knowledge about clients and the general social work practice could be received, through which the evidence base could amplify (van Yperen, 2013). Third, when clients are given access to their ECR, the doctor–patient communication, adherence, patient empowerment and patient education are modestly ameliorated (Ross and Lin, 2003). However, the promised goals and expectations of ICT are often not realised. Indeed, there is a long history of ‘failed’ information systems in care (Avison and Young, 2007). Bal and de Bont (2005) state that around 75 per cent of the projects are unsuccessful. Moreover, research indicates that the implementation of certain information systems can even impede service delivery (Bal and de Bont, 2005; Gillingham, 2013).

• inally, on the one hand, through the use of ECR, social workers and services may focus on achieving service outputs, while paying little attention to users and their preferences

• ‘there seems to be an established rule of factual recording in social work, which excludes workers’ experience and tacit knowledge of cases'

• Discretion

• e interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts’ (Kling, 2000, p. 218).

• a consequence, the implications of ICT cannot be taken into account without their social embedding. ECR perfectly fit this theoretical framework.

• ouwen states that certain branches find filling out Charlotte secondary to building a high-quality relationship with their clients (Nouwen et al., 2012). As a result, social workers try to minimise the time spent on this ECR. In general, the filtering of information which is related to the ‘personal interpretation of what is essential information’ (Huuskonen

• propriate to use ICT while a client is speaking about personal problems. Moreover, since it is impossible to upload documents that social workers receive from other services, Charlotte is not a full and complete client record. Furthermore, due to technical problems, the ECR at times ceases working, which leads to frustration. Contrary to most software, Charlotte does not ask whether its users want to save the recorded information when they close the system. As a result, social workers lose information each time they have forgotten to save it: ‘That is very frustrating. Every time you must remember this and have the reflex to save.’ Finally, the respondents indicate that they have little knowledge about the way the government makes use of the Charlotte data: they seldom receive feedback, which does not increase their motivation to use this system.

• S fragment holistic information into pieces (Huuskonen and Vakkari, 2015; White et al., 2009),

• You used to have one big field where you could type all your information in a text, a beautiful meaningful text, where you yourself could add structure. Now, it is all cut up in different fields, and I do not think that is a positive evolution

• how the different information items are connected and why they are relevant. In doing so, they provide a narrative account of a client's situation and clearly transmit their assessment.

• On the other hand, user outcomes could be detected and consequently improved via the analysis of these databases (van Yperen, 2013). These examples illustrate the necessity for acquiring more knowledge about the use and the usefulness of ICT in social services.